LIBRARY 

>iTY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


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RHYTHM 

AS   A   DISTINGUISHING   CHARACTERISTIC 

OF 
PROSE    STYLE 


BY 

ABRAM   LIPSKY,   PH.  D. 


ARCHIVES    OF   PSYCHOLOGY 

HJDIXED   BY   R.    B.    WOODWORTH 


NO.   4,  JUNE    1907 

Columbia  University  Contributions  to  Philosophy  and  Psychology.  Vol.  XV,  No.  4 


NEW    YORK 

THE    SCIENCE   PRESS 


C  0  X  T  E  N  T  S 


PAGE 

INTRODUCTION    1-2 

LITERATURE   2-  6 

THE  FACT  OF  PROSE  RHYTHM 6-8 

Study  of  Phonographic  Records 

Study  of  Public  Speakers  

Composite   Scanning    

VARIETIES  OF  RHYTHM  IN  DIFFERENT  STYLES 9-23 

Scanning  by  the  Writer 

Scanning  by  Others  

Measures  of  Reliability  

EXAMPLES  OF   PROSE  RHYTHMS 23-24 

RHYTHM  OF  PHRASAL  SECTIONS 24-27 

PHRASAL  RHYTHM  IN  POETRY 27-28 

MEANS  OF  PRODUCING  PROSE  RHYTHM 29-32 

Length  of  Words   

Choice  of  Words 

Order  of  Words   

Figures  of  Speech   

THOUGHT  RHYTHM  33-37 

Parallelism    

Balance  of  Phrase  and  Word 

SENTENCE  AND  PARAGRAPH  RHYTHM 37-39 

THE   CONCEPT   "STYLE" 40-41 

CAUSE  AND  UTILITY  OF  LANGUAGE  RHYTHM.  .  41-44 


RHYTHM  AS  A  DISTINGUISHING 
CHARACTERISTIC   OF  PROSE    STYLE 

It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  modern  Rhetoric  that  does  not  con- 
tain a  few  paragraphs  on  "the  rhythm  of  prose."  It  would  be  just 
as  difficult  to  obtain  from  those  paragraphs  a  clear  idea  of  what 
rhythm  in  prose  really  is.  One  of  the  most  explicit  statements  is:1 

"Rhythm  in  prose  may  be  defined  as  the  alternate  swelling  and 
lessening  of  sound  at  certain  intervals.  It  refers  to  the  general 
effect  of  sentences  and  paragraphs,  where  the  words  are  chosen  and 
arranged  so  as  not  only  to  express  •  the  meaning  of  the  writer,  but 
also  to  furnish  a  musical  accompaniment  which  shall  at  once  delight 
the  ear  by  its  sound  and  help  out  the  sense  by  its  suggestiveness." 

This  writer  does  not  tell  us  whether  there  is  any  regularity  in 
the  alternate  swelling  and  lessening  of  sound;  nor,  if  there  is,  how 
much.  He  does  not  say  what  are  the  means  by  which  the  rhythm 
of  prose  is  produced;  nor  does  he,  or  any  other  of  the  writers  re- 
ferred to,  explain  exactly  what  they  mean  by  "rhythm." 

When  we  come  upon  an  allusion  in  literary  criticism  to  an 
author's  "rhythmical  style"  we  commonly  think  of  an  agreeable  sense 
of  movement  had  in  reading  him.  But  if  we  ask  ourselves  what  it 
is  that  moves,  what  makes  the  difference  between  a  rhythmical  and 
an  unrhythmical  style,  or  how  the  rhythm  of  one  author  differs  from 
that  of  another,  we  find  that  our  conceptions  are  exceedingly  vague. 

The  writer  was  impelled  to  enter  upon  the  present  study  on  find- 
ing himself  unable  to  use  the  concept  "rhythm  in  prose/'  because  of 
its  vagueness,  in  a  series  of  experiments  that  he  had  planned  for 
determining  the  psychology  of  judgments  on  literary  styles.  He  had 
taken,  for  instance,  several  versions  of  Dante's,  "There  is  no  greater 
sorrow  than  in  misery  to  remember  the  happy  time,"  and  asked  about 
thirty  graduate  students  to  arrange  them  in  order  of  preference  and 
to  give  reasons  for  first  and  last  choice.  "Because  it  is  smooth," 
"Because  it  is  rhythmical,"  "Like  the  sound  of  it,"  "Sounds  rough," 
were  among  the  reasons  given.  The  question  arose:  What  change 
in  a  sentence  will  make  a  rough  one  smooth  or  a  smooth  one  rough  ? 

1  De  Mille,  Elements  of  Rhetoric.    §  299. 


2  RHYTHM    /,V   PROSE. 

It  seemed  necessary  to  know,  what  elements,  of  sound  or  of  sense, 
go  to  constitute  what  is  called  the  rhythm  of  a  piece  of  writing. 

The  phenomenon  of  rhythm  in  prose  was  recognized  by  the  ora- 
tors and  rhetoricians  of  Greece  and  Rome,  and  they  gave  definite 
rules  for  producing  it.  Aristotle  philosophizes  concerning  the  mat- 
ter in  a  way  suggestive  of  Herbert  Spencer's  effort  in  his  well- 
known  essay  on  style.  "That  composition  which  is  entirely  devoid  of 
rhythm  is  indefinite,"  says  Aristotle.  "The  indefinite  or  unlimited 
is  displeasing  and  cannot  be  known.  It  ought  to  be  limited,  only 
not  by  meter  like  verse."  "So  soon  as  a  definite  measure  is  caught 
the  ear  waits  for  its  return."  He  goes  on  to  specify  what  kinds  of 
"feet"  are  most  suitable  for  prose.  The  "heroic"  measure  is  not 
suitable  because  it  is  too  solemn  and  too  remote  from  the  language 
of  conversation;  the  "trochaic"  is  too  light  and  tripping.  There 
remains  the  "paeonic"  rhythm,  which,  though  used  by  many  rhetori- 
cians, had  not  been  defined.  It  has  two  forms,  —  -  -  -  and  -  -  -  — , 
—  the  first  suitable  for  the  beginning  of  a  sentence,  the  second 
lor  the  end.1  Cicero  follows  Aristotle  in  the  main,  and  gives  illus- 
trations from  his  own  orations.2 

Recent  students  have  found  that  the  ancients  wrote  as  they  pleased 
and  theory  has  to  make  the  best  .of  it.  Blass  has  "scanned"  selected 
passages  from  the  classical  "Kunstprosa"  with  the  aim  of  disclosing 
the  underlying  rhythmical  schemes.  He  leaves  ancient  theory  far 
behind.3  Weil  disputes  Cicero's  dictum  as  to  the  reason  why  a 
certain  celebrated  oratorical  period  was  greeted  with  tremendous  ap- 
plause.4 Norden  remarks  that  "in  the  antique  conception  rhythmic 
prose  was  identical  with  periodic."5 

The  subject  of  prose  rhythm  has  received  considerable  attention 
of  late  years  from  psychologists.  It  has  been  touched  upon  inci- 
dentally by  investigators  of  rhythm  in  general,  like  Bolton,  Meu- 
mann,  McDougal  and  Stetson ;  and  directly  attacked  by  Wallin,  Marbe 
and  Scott. 

The  experimental  investigation  of  rhythm  has  added  to  our 
knowledge  on  such  points  as  the  limits  within  which  irregularities  in 
the  time  intervals  between  successive  impressions  may  occur  without 
destroying  a  rhythm, -on  the  effect  of  the  rate  of  succession  of  im- 
pressions in  facilitating  or  hindering  the  arousal  of  a  feeling  of 
rhythm,  on  the  availability  of  different  kinds  of  impressions  for 

1  Aristotle,  Rhetoric  III,  8. 

2  Cicero,  De  Oratore. 

i  Blass,  Die  Rhythraen  der  Attischen  Kunstprosa.     Leipzig.  1901. 
*  Weil.  Order  of  Words,  p.  13,  tr.  by  Super,  1887. 
s  Norden,  Die  Antike  Kunstprosa,  p.  42,  1898. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE,  3 

shaping  into  a  rhythm,  on  the  relations  between  rhythm-perception 
and  physical  or  mental  activities,  and  so  on.  But  owing  to  the 
nature  of  the  stimuli  used  in  these  experiments — simple  sensations, 
like  hammer  clicks  or  light-flashes, — few  of  the  detailed  results  can 
be  used  in  the  study  of  the  rhythm  of  language,  where  the  rhythmical 
material  is  so  much  more  complex  in  character.  There  are,  however, 
a  few  facts  of  a  general  nature  that  are  significant  for  our  purpose. 

The  definition  of  rhythm  in  Baldwin's  dictionary  seems  to  com- 
mit the  error  of  identifying  mere  repetition  with  rhythm.1  "Rhythm 
is  a  repeating  series  of  time  intervals:  events  which  occur  in  such  a 
series  are  said  to  have  rhythm."  We  have  on  the  other  hand  the 
statement  of  Bolton  that  a  rhythm  in  speech  means  a  series  of 
groups  of  sounds.2  and  Ebbinghaus's  that  rhythm  is  "an  organization 
of  sensations  following  one  another  in  time,  by  the  combination  of 
several  of  them  into  unified  groups  (not,  as  is  sometimes  said,  the 
mere  succession  of  impressions  following  one  another  in  equal  inter- 
vals of  time)."3 

We  are  no  longer  bound,  in  considering  language  rhythm,  to  re- 
main within  the  arbitrary  limits  of  literary  metrical  theory.  An 
increase  in  the  number  of  elements  composing  a  group  in  a  rhythmi- 
cal series  does  not  proportionally  increase  the  apparent  length  of 
the  groups.4  Rhythm  does  not  depend  upon  equality  of  successive 
time-intervals.  Only  an  approximate  equality  is  necessary.5  Meu- 
mann  has  shown  that  intervals  as  long  as  four  or  five  seconds  are 
very  inaccurately  estimated,  are  merely  guessed  at,  while  reading. 

Attention  plays  an  important  part  in  the  perception  of  rhythm. 
This  is  especially  so  in  the  case  of  subjective  rhythmization — the 
feeling  of  rhythm  in  an  objectively  monotonous  series  of  impressions. 
Different  forms  of  rhythm  are  felt  according  as  one  or  another  is 
imagined.  Conversely,  a  rhythmical  series  of  impressions  is  more 
easily  attended  to  and  better  remembered  than  a  structureless  series.6 

The  rhythmical  material  may  be  a  succession  of  simple  sense  im- 
pressions like  the  auditory  and  visual  sensations  employed  in  labora- 
tory experiments;  auditory  sensations  that  vary  in  pitch  as  well  as 
in  loudness  and  duration,  as  in  music;  a  series  of  movements  as  in 
dancing;  or  of  sounds  having  meanings,  as  in  language.  There  is  a 

1  Diet,  of  Philos.  and  Psychol.  Art.  "Rhythm." 

2  Bolton,  Am.  Journal  of  Psychology,  v.  6,  p.  158,  1894. 
»Ebbinghaus,  Grundzuege  der  Psychologic,  vol.  1,  p.  507. 
*  Miner  Motor,  Visual  and  Applied  Rhythms,  p.  36,  1903. 

s  Philos  Stud.,  vol.  X,  p.  404. 

e  Mueller  and  Schumann.  Experimented  Beitraege  zur  Untersuchung 
des  Gedaechtnisses.  Zeitsch.  f.  Psychol.  und  Psysiol.  d.  Sinnesorg.  Bd.  VI, 
1893. 


4  RHYTHM  IN  PROSE. 

rhythm  of  thought  distinguishable,  if  not  separable,  from  the  rhythm 
of  language,  controlling  and  supplementing  the  purely  phonetic 
rhythm.  In  poetry,  phonetic  rhythm  often  overrides  thought  rhythm. 
In  prose,  phonetic  rhythm  is,  on  the  whole,  subordinate  to  thought 
rhythm.  As  the  complexity  of  the  rhythmized  material  increases,  ir- 
regularities in  the  succession  of  the  simpler  stimuli  are  more  and 
more  disregarded. 

"Bhythm  appears  in  thought  with  simple  perception  of  a  number 
of  objects,"  says  James.  "Accentuation  and  emphasis  are  present  in 
every  perception  we  have.  We  find  it  quite  impossible  to  disperse 
our  attention  impartially  over  a  number  of  impressions."1  When 
thought  moves  decidedly  in  a  definite  direction  under  the  impulse 
to  become  speech,  these  accentuations  and  emphases  become  more  dis- 
tinct. Language  fixes  them  permanently,  although  they  may  be  felt 
before  becoming  embodied  in  words. 

An  experimental  investigation  of  speech  rhythm  has  been  made 
by  Wallin.2  His  subjects  spoke  various  pieces  of  prose  and  poetry 
into  a  phonograph.  The  records  were  then  reproduced  and  studied 
by  ear.  Durations  were  measured  by  reacting  with  a  telegraph  key 
to  certain  sounds  or  pauses  in  the  reproduced  speech.  Intensities  and 
pitches  were  estimated  and  grouped  by  the  listener.  When  in  doubt, 
other  listeners  were  substituted  to  check  his  impressions. 

Although  the  method  is  open  to  certain  objections — the  noise  of 
the  stylus,  and  subjective  errors  in  making  the  estimations,  which 
have  been  pointed  out  by  Stetson — some  of  the  results  that  especially 
interest  us  here  may  be  safely  accepted.  Wallin  found  that  the  chief 
guide  in  deciding  whether  a  piece  of  writing  was  prose  or  verse,  was 
the  arrangement  of  the  lines  to  the  eye.  When  verse  was  printed  as 
prose,  or  vice  versa,  the  one  was  often  taken  for  the  other.  The  fol- 
lowing bit  of  prose  by  Bacon  was  called  poetry  by  a  majority  of  his 
subjects : 

To  the  poor  Christian  that  sits  bound  in  the  galley, 
To  despairful  widows,  pensive  prisoners,  and  deposed  kings; 
To  them  whose  fortune  runs  back  and  whose  spirits  mutiny, 
Unto  such  death  is  a  redeemer,  and  the  grave  a  place  of  rest.8 

His  subjects  spoke  prose  more  rapidly  than  poetry,  the  averages 
being  3.14  syllables  of  poetry  per  second,  and  3.81  of  prose — 20  per 
cent,  more  prose.  They  spoke  10  per  cent,  more  prose  syllables  during 
an  expiration  than  poetry — 5.91  of  the  former  and  5.41  of  the  latter. 

1  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  1,  p.  284. 

2  Researches  on  the  Rhyfohm  of  Speech,  Studies  from  the  Yale  Psycho- 
logical Laboratory,  vol.  IX,  1901 « 

3  Ibid. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  5 

The  natural  inference  from  these  figures  seems  to  be  that  equal  in- 
tervals of  time  in  prose  may  be  filled  with  unequal  numbers  of  unac- 
cented syllables,  the  larger  number  being  spoken  more  rapidly.  Per- 
fect rhythm,  measured  by  perfect  equality  of  time  intervals  between 
accents,  was  but  slightly  more  common  in  verse  than  in  prose. 

The  method  employed  by  Scripture  of  measuring  the  physical 
impression  on  phonographic  discs,  although  objective  in  a  high  degree, 
is  too  tedious  for  pieces  of  any  length.1  It  is  imperfect  besides,  in 
confusing  objective  magnitude  with  subjective  impressions.  An  ac- 
cent in  language  means  an  accent  to  the  mind  of  the  reader  or  lis- 
tener, and  is  wholly  relative  to  adjacent  stresses,  durations  and 
pitches.  A  weak  sound  may  be  felt  as  accented  if  preceded  and 
followed  by  weaker  ones.  The  degree  of  difference  that  shall  be 
judged  sufficient  to  constitute  an  accent  is  a  subjective  matter.  It 
follows,  that  this  rigidly  physical  method  must  rely  ultimately  on  the 
estimate  of  the  listening  mind,  and  cannot  claim  to  be  free  from 
subjective  errors. 

The  good,  old  process  of  "scanning,"  which  was  employed  by  Blass 
in  his  studies  of  Greek  and  Latin  prose,  has  been  used  by  Marbe  on 
the  prose  of  Goethe  and  Heine.2  He  began  by  scanning  the  first  and 
second  thousand  words  of  Goethe's  "St.  Eochusfest"  and  Heine's 
"Harzreise"  (both  travel  sketches),  while  a  friend  scanned  the  sec- 
ond and  third  thousand.  The  average  number  of  unaccented  sylla- 
bles per  interval  between  two  accents  was  calculated,  and  the  frequency 
of  each  variety  of  "foot"  found  in  each  thousand  words.  The  scan- 
ning of  his  friend  agreed  sufficiently  with  his  own  to  show  that  the 
differences  found  between  Goethe's  and  Heine's  prose  were  objectively 
there,  and  the  results  from  the  successive  thousands  showed  that  the 
characteristics  of  the  first  thousand  might  be  expected  to  hold 
throughout  each  piece.  It  was  found  that  Goethe's  sketch  had  a 
greater  number  of  certain  kinds  of  feet  and  less  of  others  than  did 
Heine's,  and  that  the  average  foot  was  shorter  in  the  former  than  in 
the  latter.  Marbe  then  scanned  a  thousand  words  from  each  of 
half  a  dozen  other  writings  of  the  same  authors  and  found  similar 
differences. 

Finally,  two  very  suggestive  essays  by  Scott  should  be  mentioned.1 
This  writer  claims  to  have  discovered  two  styles  of  vocal  change  within 
prose  sentences.  In  one  type  the  voice  rises  in  pitch  to  the  apex  of 
an  arc,  is  held  suspended  for  a  time,  then  descends;  in  the  other  it 
rises,  begins  to  descend  and  the  pause  does  not  enter  until  it  has 

i  Elements  of  Experimental  Phonetics,  1902. 

-Rhythmus  im  Prosa,  Giessen,  1904. 

a  Modern  Language  Association  Pub.  1905. 


6  RHYTHM   /AT   PROSE. 

descended  by  the  musical  interval  of  a  fourth  or  a  minor  fourth. 
Scott's  theory  is  that  these  inflectional  arcs  constitute  the  "feet"  of 
prose  rhythm,  which  are  compounded  in  various  ways.  He  admits 
that  there  are  other  rhythmical  elements  also,  such  as  stress,  alliter- 
ation, balance  of  clause  and  phrase,  etc.  Scott's  observations,  it 
appears,  were  made  on  his  own  reading;  he  gives  no  detailed  account 
of  them.  Stetson  has  estimated  the  falling  slide  at  the  close  of 
sentences  to  be  an  interval  of  a  third  or  a  fourth.1 


Phonographic  recitation  records  enable  one  easily  to  observe  the 
rhythm  of  prose.  Cylinder  records  of  Lincoln's  "Gettysburg  Speech," 
of  Ingersoll  on  "Napoleon's  Tomb"  and  of  McKinley's  "Speech  at 
the  Pan- American  Exposition,"  are  on  the  market, — spoken,  of  course, 
by  an  elocutionist.  The  elocutionist's  artificiality  mars  rather  than 
improves  these  pieces,  but  their  measured  character  becomes  obvious 
enough.  The  writer  from  much  listening  had  them  so  impressed 
on  his  mind,  that  they  ran  through  his  head  constantly  in  the  elo- 
cutionist's voice,  and  he  read  them  in  the  elocutionist's  manner  when 
he  had  the  written  copies  before  him.  It  was  not  difficult  to  mark 
on  a  copy  the  syllables  accented  in  the  phonograph.  The  rhythm  of 
the  first  sentence  of  the  Ingersoll  selection,  for  example,  is  quite  dis- 
tinct. It  is  here  given  as  marked,'  with  accents  and  pauses : 

A  little  while  ago  |  I  stood  at  the  tomb  of  the  first  Napoleon  | 
a  magnificent  tomb  of  gilt  and  gold  |  where  rested  at  last  the  ashes 
of  that  restless  man.|| 

Xo  measurements  or  calculations  were  made  on  these  specimens. 
The  chief  result  of  the  study  of  them  was  to  accustom  the  ear  to 
detect  beats  in  prose.  The  fact  of  the  existence  of  rhythm  in  prose 
became  clear  and  certain.  It  is  easy  to  "beat  time"  while  each 
of  the  phrases  separated  by  the  vertical  lines  in  the  above  sentence 
is  spoken. 

In  listening  to  public  speakers,  one  is  usually  so  interested  in  the 
meaning  of  the  discourse  that  one  does  not  observe  the  rhythm  of  its 
sound,  but  if  the  language  is  a  foreign  one  and  unintelligible  there 
is  nothing  but  the  sound  to  attend  to,  and  its  rhythmical  character 
becomes  apparent.  The  writer  listened  to  a  sermon  of  which  he  did 
not  understand  a  word,  in  the  Russian  church  in  New  York.  He  was 
able  to  beat  time  for  short  stretches,  though  constantly  thrown  out 
at  pauses,  where  the  movement  broke  up  and  varied.  But  the  delivery 

i  Harvard  Psychl.  Studies.  1903. 


RHYTHM   IN'  PROSE. 

of  some  American  public  speakers  is  so  markedly  rhythmical  as  to 
become  annoying  in  its  unvaried  chant.  With  a  little  effort,  it  is 
possible  to  abstract  the  attention  from  the  meaning  of  what  is  said 
and  beat  time.  The  writer  has  done  it  very  often. 

That  authors  of  marked  individuality  of  style  differ  from  one  an- 
other in  the  quality  of  rhythm  is  a  commonplace  of  literary  criticism. 
Every  sensitive  reader  feels  the  difference  between  such  writers  as 
Scott  and  Stevenson,  Macaulay  and  Carlyle,  De  Quincey  and  Emerson, 
Dickens  and  Thackeray,  Spencer  and  Huxley.  What  is  at  the  bottom 
of  these  differences?  In  poetry  different  rhythms  are  produced  by 
various  metrical  forms  that  may  be  schematically  exhibited.  Can 
anything  like  this  be  done  for  prose? 

The  following  experiment  to  test  this  question  was  made.  A  num- 
ber of  mimeograph  copies  were  made  of  selections  from  Scott,  Steven- 
son, Thackeray,  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Hawthorne  and  Lotze  (transla- 
tion). The  selections  were  arranged  as  if  by  one  author  in  consecu- 
tive paragraphs,  each  of  about  130  words.  One  person  read  aloud 
while  another  marked  the  syllables  that  to  his  hearing  were  accented. 
Six  markings  were  thus  obtained.  In  going  over  the  copies  after- 
wards, three  or  more  marks  on  a  syllable  were  considered  an  accent. 

The  most  surprising  result  of  the  experiment  was  that  only  one 
of  the  persons  engaged  in  it  was  sure,  when  asked,  that  the  selections 
were  by  different  authors.  The  others  had  not  noticed  the  fact.  One 
declared  they  were  by  the  same  author.  The  selections  had,  of  course, 
purposely  been  chosen  so  as  to  be  on  congruous  topics. 

More  syllables  were  marked  towards  the  close  than  at  the  be- 
ginning, showing  that  the  discriminativeness  of  the  markers  increased 
as  they  proceeded.  There  was  a  high  degree  of  agreement  among  the 
markers  but  the  selections  differed  from  one  another  in  the  proportion 
of  unaccented  to  accented  syllables. 

A  couple  of  sentences  with  the  markings  gathered  from  the  several 
sheets  are  here  given : 

15  5  4  415 

You  might  sooner  get  lightning  out  of  incense  smoke  than  true 

48  546 

action  or  passion  out  af  your  modern  English  religion.     You  had 

5  4  6  53432 

better  get  rid  of  the  smoke  and  the  organ  pipes  both,  leave  them 

56  5  6  63 

and  the  Gothic  windows  and  the  painted  glass  to  the  property  man, 

5  134  614  5 

give  up  your  carburetted  hydrogen  ghost  in  one  healthy  expiration 

26  5 

and  look  after  Lazarus  at  the  door-step. 

The  agreement  is  close  enough  to  justify  the  assumption  that  the 
scanning  of  one  individual  having  "a  good  ear,"  would  be  just  as 
valid  for  the  practical  purpose  in  view  as  the  result  obtained  by  add- 


8  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

ing  markings  of  several  persons.  There  is  considerable  variation  in 
the  scanning  of  good  poetry  by  scholars.  These  individual  variations, 
however,  are  insignificant  beside  the  large  differences  due  to  different 
types  of  rhythm,  like  blank  verse  and  hexameter,  shown  by  the  scan- 
ning of  all  alike.  One  person's  scanning  of  a  number  of  poetical 
specimens  would  be  sure  to  show  these  typical  differences,  however 
it  might  vary  in  detail  from  the  scanning  of  another.  The  assump- 
tion is  that  if  there  are  distinct  rhythmical  types  in  prose,  the  same 
procedure  there  should  give  valid  results. 

The  term  "scanning"  applied  to  prose  obviously  does  not  mean 
quite  the  same  process  as  that  gone  through  by  the  school-boy  who 
scans  Virgil.  The  school-boy  is  taught  that  the  poetry  he  is  to  scan 
consists  of  two  kinds  of  syllables  arranged  according  to  definite  rules 
and  his  task  is  to  find  how  each  line  conforms  to  the  given  pattern. 
The  pattern  being  flexible  within  definite  limits,  the  boy's  ingenuity 
is  expended  in  accounting  for  seeming  irregularities  in  the  line  be- 
fore him.  But  we  never  are  provided  with  a  ready-made  pattern  for 
any  piece  of  prose.  Scanning  prose,  then,  must  mean  marking  accents 
wherever  we  feel  them.  Here  a  certain  amount  of  vagueness  enters. 
Not  having  a  pattern  to  guide  us,  which  accents  shall  we  mark?  For 
there  are  accents  of  various  degrees  of  intensity. 

A  good  poem  sets  the  tune  in  the  first  line  so  unmistakably 
that  the  succeeding  lines,  even  though  they  be  somewhat  uncertain 
rhythmically,  are  drawn  by  the  reader  into  the  rhythm  suggested 
at  the  beginning.1  Prose  has  no  lines  like  those  of  poetry,  and  its 
rhythmical  units  certainly  do  not  follow  each  other  with  any  such 
regularity  as  do  the  lines  of  poetry.  Nevertheless,  a  phrase  in  prose 
frequently  suggests  a  rhythm  as  distinctly  as  does  a  line  of  poetry, 
and  rhythms  are  echoed  in  prose  as  in  verse. 

The  tendency  to  accommodate  the  time  of  a  syllable  in  prose  to  fit 
the  movement  of  the  phrase  in  which  it  occurs,  may  be  shown  by  a 
simple  experiment.  Give  a  person  the  sentence,  "You  are  a  wicked 
man,"  to  read  aloud,  and  then,  "You  are  a  bad  man."  There  will 
be  a  distinct  lingering  on  the  word  "bad."  So  in  the  second  of  the 
sentences,  "How  do  you  do  this  morning?"  and.  "How  do  you  do 
this  morning?"  where  the  first  "do"  is  emphasized,  "you"  is  pro- 
longed. There  may  be  a  shifting  of  accent  from  one  syllable  to  an- 
other, as  may  be  seen  on  comparing  the  two  sentences,  "That  judg- 
ment was  unjust,"  and  "It  was  an  unjust  judgment."  In  the  first, 
"unjust"  is  accented  on  the  second  syllable;  in  the  second,  on  the 
first.2 

1  Lanier,  Science  of  Eiig.  Verse,  p.  10,  1880. 

2  I>ewis,  C.  M.,  Principles  of  Eug.  Verse,  p.  1,  1906. 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  9 

In  order  to  determine  whether  various  prose  styles  differ  from 
one  another  in  accentual  rhythm  the  method  of  scanning  was  em- 
ployed, as  follows:  A  thousand  words  (or  more,  if  needed  to  reach 
a  full  stop)  were  counted  from  the  works  of  different  authors,  and 
"scanned"  by  the  writer.  The  whole  number  of  syllables  was  counted, 
also  the  accented  and  the  unaccented  syllables.  The  average  number 
of  unaccented  syllables  between  a  pair  of  accented  syllables  was  cal- 
culated. Then  the  frequency  of  each  type  of  "foot"  was  counted;—- 

that  is,  the  number  of  times  the  combination , , 

— ,  —  -  -  -  —  etc.,  occurred.  Sentence  stops  were  disregarded. 
The  procedure  here  described,  it  will  be  seen,  is  the  same  as  that  em- 
ployed by  Marbe. 

To  illustrate:  The  first  1,004  words  of  Cooper's  Red  Rover  con- 
tained 1,593  syllables,  498  were  accented  in  scanning,  1,095  were 
left  unaccented, — average  unaccented  interval  2.20  syllables,  average 
deviation  .99,  average  word  1.59  syllables.  The  distribution  of  groups 
or  "feet"  was  as  follows : 

00 
OtJ 

120 


Since  the  number  of  syllables  in  the  different  selections  scanned 
varied,  distributions  were  calculated  for  a  common  base  of  1,000  sylla- 
bles. The  above  accordingly  gave: 

20.75 
75.48 
96.23 

—  72.96 

35.85 
9.43 
1.88 

Table  I  gives  the  frequencies  of  the  various  types  of  "foot"  for 
35  specimens  scanned  by  the  writer.  The  figures  over  the  columns 

indicate  types  of  "foot" :  0  — ,  1  =. ,  2  = , 

3  = — ,  etc.     In  the  left-hand  column  of  the  Table  are 

given  authors  and  titles.    These  are  in  full : 
COOPER  Red  Rover 

BAHRIE  Little  Minister 

STEVENSON  Old  Pacific  Capital 

KIPLING  In  the  Matter  of  a  Private 

Incarnation  of  Krishna  Mulvaney 

Man  Who  Was 


10 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 


JAMES,  H. 
HOWELLS 

DICKENS 
KUSKIN 

MILTON 

BBOWNE 

ADDISON 

JOHNSON 

DE  QUINCEY 

CABLYLE 

MACAULAY 

LAMB 

EMERSON 

HOLMES 

BURKE 

WEBSTER 

INGERSOLL 

THE  TIMES 

THE  JOURNAL 

THE  TIMES 

SPENCER 

HUXLEY 

DARWIN 
JAMES,  W. 
TENNYSON 


Watch  and  Ward 
The  Ambassadors 
The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook 
Landlord  at  Lion's  Head 
Nicholas  Nickleby 
Modern  Painters 
Sesame  and  Lilies 
Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates 
Urn  Burial 
Essay  on  Milton 
Essay  on  Shakespeare 
Essay  on  Shakespeare 
Hero  Worship:  Shakespeare 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson 
Old  and  New  Schoolmaster 
Nature 

Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table 
On  Conciliation  With  America 
Character  of  Washington 
Heretics 
Editorial 
Editorial 

Keport  of  an  Accident 
Principles  of  Psychology 
Physiography,  Chap.  I 
Preface  to  the  above 
Expression  of  Emotions 
Principles  of  Psychology:  Habit 
The  Princess:  Prologue  (blank  verse) 


TABLE 

I. 

(0) 

(1) 

(2) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

(6)        (7)      (8) 

C'OOPEB     

20.75 

75.48 

96.23 

72.96 

35.85 

9.43 

1.88 

BARBIE    

36.34 

120.08 

98.75 

54  30 

24.49 

1027 

2  37 

STEVENSON    

39.49 

140.01 

76.10 

8544 

16.51 

3.59 

71 

KIPLING  — 
I.    M.    P  

.  .  .  .43.72 

126.30 

100.63 

60.37 

22.90 

5  53 

69        69 

j.   K.   11  

29.48 

97.15 

106.53 

61.64 

26  80 

8  71 

67 

M   w.  w.  .  .  . 

25.92 

93.96 

93.96 

63  30 

28  51 

8  42 

5  81         64 

JAMES,  H.— 
W.   W  

....  30.91 

108.54 

102.36 

68.01 

24  73 

6  87 

68 

Amb  

31.32 

95.35 

112.05 

61  24 

23  66 

11  13 

2  08 

HOWELLS  — 
L.   A. 

..18.92 

87.62 

91.13 

72.90 

27.33 

».S1 

3  ftO      1.RO          7O 

RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  11 

(0)  (1)  (2)           (3)  (4)  (5)  (6)        (7)      (g) 

L.   L.    H 16.60  84.47  109.74  69.31  26.71  6.49  2.16       .72 

DICKENS    29.88  118.19  95.61  63.08  26.56  5.97  .66 

RUSKIN — 

M.   P 52.54  141.29  87.33  66.74  16.33  7.10  1.42 

S.    L 30.73  95.53  96.79  64.09  30.73  9.15  .65                   .65 

MILTON     28.93  107.00  78.74  82.10  26.24  6.73  .67 

BROWNE    24.58  112.69  116.11  62,83  21.85  4.78  .68 

ADDISON    19.96  88.87  89.51  66.33  36.06  8.37  3.86 

JOHNSON      8.56  77.72  87.51  78.94  37.94  6.73  3.06 

DE   QUINCEY    16.83  89.76  92.56  64.51  38.14  8.97  2.24                   .56 

CARLYLE    33.36  116.45  102.83  63.33  19.06  6.81  2.72       .68 

MACAULAY    20.86  73.67  87.36  73.02  29.34  11.08  4.56     3.91 

LAMB     17.95  85.42  100.27  60.04  33.42  11.14  2.47       .61 

EMERSON    23.76  106.24  111.14  65.00  23.06  9.08 

HOLMES    22.04  89.58  105.93  63.99  27.72  8.53  .71     1.42       .71 

BURKE     15.31  75.28  98.25  74.00  33.81  9.57  1.91 

WEBSTEK     26.78  87.22  88.46  71.02  31.77  8.09  3.73       .62       .62 

INGERSOLL    26.67  135.48  91.26  55.45  28.78  7.72  1.40 

THE    Times    17.44  81.61  96.56  64.79  33.64  9.34  3.11     1.24       .62 

THE    Journal     26.22  113.16  101.43  61.41  23.46  5.52  3.45     1.38 

THE    Times,   R 35.00  93.60  98.93  78.38  22.83  3.80  2.28 

SPENCER    20.36  51.45  75.04  63.78  34.30  23.58  5.89     3.21     1.07 

HUXLEY — 

Phys.    Ch.    1 38.30  111.55  120.96  57.12  22.84  4.69 

Pref 20.46  84.28  105.35  65.61  34.31  5.41  4.21 

DARWIN     34.59  91.20  111.96  66.04  23.27  7.54  1.25       .62 

JAMES,    W 28.42  93.86  116.99  65.43  23.13  7.27  1.32 

"THE   PRINCESS"    ...22.68  286.52  28.72  65.01  6.04  2.26  .75 

AVERAGES    26.85  98.52  98.95  66.81,27.53  8.80  2.11 

(excluding  the  last) 


Table  II  gives  the  average  unaccented  interval  in  syllables,  the 
average  deviation  from  this  average,  and  the  average  word-length 
in  syllables,  for  each  of  the  selections. 

TABLE  II. 

Av.  Int.  A.  D.  Av.  W. 

COOPER    2.20  .99  1.58 

BAHRIE    1.87  .98  1.26 

STEVENSON 1.76  .97  1.37 

KIPLING— I.    M.    P 1.77  .95  1.40 

I.  K.  M 1.97  .91  1.43 

M.   W.  W 2.09  1.02  1.52 

JAMBS,  H.— W.   W 1.91  .92  1.44 

Amb 1.96  .92  1.42 

HOWELLS— L.    A 2.18  .98  1.42 

L.  L.  H 2.13  .9U  1.38 


12  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 


DICKENS    , 

,  1.89 

.94 

1.46 

KUSKIN  —  M.    P  , 

,  1.67 

.98 

1.35 

S.   L  , 

,  2.01 

.96 

1.46 

MILTON    

1.99 

.93 

1.47 

BBOWNB    

1.89 

.85 

1.43 

ADDISON    

2.17 

1.02 

1.50 

JOHNSON  

2.31 

1.00 

1.59 

DB   QUINCEY    

2.17 

1.01 

1.66 

CABLYLE    

1.87 

.94 

1.44 

MACAULAY  

2.29 

1.30 

1.51 

LAMB   

2.19 

1.00 

1.50 

EMEBSON    

1.95 

.85 

1.42 

HOLMES    

2.08 

.94 

1.39 

BUBKB    

2.24 

.97 

1.56 

WEBSTER    

2.13 

1.13 

1.53 

INGEBSOLL  

1.85 

.96 

1.40 

THE  Times,  Ed  

2.23 

.99 

1.54 

THE  Journal,  Ed  

1.93 

93 

1.44 

THE    Times,   R  

1.95 

.93 

1.42 

SPENCEB    

2.56 

1.01 

1.76 

HDXLEY  —  Ch.   I  

1.80 

.88 

1.42 

Pref  

2.13 

95 

1.63 

DABWIN    

1.95 

.91 

1.57 

JAMES,  W  

1.97 

.86 

1.50 

"THE  PBINCESS"    , 

1.40 

.71 

1.29 

A  cursory  glance  at  Table  I  shows  that  each  selection  has  a  foot 
of  maximum  frequency,  either  (1)  or  (2)  ;  that  the  curves  rise  more 
steeply  than  they  descend;  that  there  is  considerable  variety  of  shape 
in  the  curves.  A  few  typical  ones  have  been  plotted  and  are  given  in 
the  accompanying  charts.  The  points  to  be  noted  are :  the  acute  and 
the  rounded  summit,  the  steep  and  the  gradual  descent,  the  summit 
in  (1)  and  the  summit  in  (2),  the  double  apex  or  dip  (Milton  and 
Stevenson). 

Before  proceeding  to  discuss  the  figures  presented  in  the  pre- 
ceding tables,  it  will  be  desirable  to  give  some  evidence  of  their  reli- 
ability; first,  as  measures  of  objective  fact;  second,  as  typical  of  the 
whole  work  from  which  each  selection  was  taken. 

The  first  thousand  words  of  Cooper's  "Red  Rover"  were  scanned 
by  two  persons  besides  the  writer.  Both  were  students  at  Teacher's 
College,  Columbia  University,  but  one  had  never  scanned  poetry. 
The  numerical  results  are  given,  together  with  those  from  the  writer's 
scansion,  for  comparison,  in  Table  III. 


13 


\ST£V£MON 
IZiQOO  A.L- 


0123456         f 


14  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

TABLE  III. 
COOPER'S  "Red  Rover."     (1st  1,000  words.) 

(0)  (1)          (2)  (3)  (4)          (5)          (6)          Av.   Int.  A.  D. 


A.    L. 

20.75 

75.48 

96.23 

72.96 

35.85 

9.43 

1.88 

2.20 

.99 

M.    R. 

25.82 

79.37 

98.12 

71.25 

33.12 

8.75 

2.50 

2.13 

.99 

L.    T. 

8.75 

56.25 

82.50 

71.25 

40.62 

14.37 

6.25 

2.54 

1.09 

The  agreement  between  the  first  two  is  close.  The  third  vanes 
from  the  other  two,  but  it  will  be  noticed  that  the  maximum  is  in 
the  same  column.  The  low  number  in  column  (0),  and  the  high 
numbers  in  columns  (5)  and  (6),  indicate  that  this  person  omitted 
a  great  many  accents  that  were  marked  by  the  first  two. 

Stevenson's  "Old  Pacific  Capital"  was  scanned  by  C.  W.,  who  had 
never  scanned  poetry.  The  next  table  ^ives  the  result,  together  with 
the  corresponding  figures  from  Table  I.  C.  W.  scanned  the  second 
thousand  words;  A.  L.  the  first  thousand. 

TABLE  IV. 
STEVENSON'S  "Old  Pacific  Capital"  (1st  &  2nd  1,000). 

Av.  AT. 

(0)  (1)          (2)          (3)     (4)         (5)        (6)     (7)  Int.  A.D.     W. 

A.    L 39.49     140.01     76.10     85.44     16.51     3.59     .71  1.76     .97     1.37 

C.   W.    57.67     122.46     79.74     76.18     18.51     7.12     .71     1.42          1.74     .98     1.38 


The  two  scansions  give  widely  divergent  figures  in  columns  (0) 
and  (1).  Now,  it  will  be  observed  that  the  number  of  (0)'s  marked 
by  C.  W.  is  far  in  excess  of  that  given  for  any  writer  by  A.  L.  in 
Table  I.  It  is  also  more  than  double  the  number  marked  by  M.  R. 
in  the  Cooper  selection.  It  seems  a  fair  inference  that  C.  W.  was  ab- 
normal in  accenting  successive  syllables.  C.  W.'s  manner  of  speaking 
supports  this  inference.  It  is  slow  and  deliberate,  with  strong  em- 
phasis, always  noticed  by  new  acquaintances.  If  we  throw  in  a  few 
unaccented  syllables  here  and  there  so  as  to  reduce  (0)  to  more  nor- 
mal size,  (1)  will  rise  proportionally.  It  should  be  noticed  that  the 
high  frequency  of  (1)  and  the  relatively  high  frequency  of  (3)  appear 
in  both  records. 

Henry  James'  "Watch  and  Ward"  was  scanned  by  K,  graduate 
student  of  English. 


.      RHYTHM   IN    PROSE.  15 

TABLE  V. 
JAMES'  "Watch  and  Ward"  (same  section) . 

(0)  (1)  (2)  (3)          (4)  (5)  (6)          A.Int.    A.D. 

A.    L 30.91        108.54        102.36       68.01        24.73       6.87          .68  1.91        .92 

K 33.61        109.07          93.98       66.54       26.06       8.91        1.37  1.92        .97 

We  observe  here  that  the  maxima  are  in  the  same  column  and  the 
general  agreement  good.  A  piece  of  prose  having  a  large  excess  of 
one  kind  of  "foot,"  we  may  assume,  will  have  a  different  rhythmical 
character  from  one  with  an  excess  of  another  kind.  Its  rhythm  will 
be  greatly  colored  by  the  predominant  type.  Hence  agreement  among 
different  markers  in  marking  the  most  frequent  "foot,"  indicates 
agreement  in  feeling  the  predominant  rhythm. 

The  most  frequent  "foot,"  it  has  been  noted,  is  always  in  column 
(1)  or  (2).  These  two  intervals  are  radically  of  different  type. 
Foot  (1)  is  two-rhythm — iambic  or  trochaic;  foot  (2)  is  three- 
rhythm — anapaestic  or  dactyllic.  Foot  (3),  on  the  other  hand,  may 
be  the  result  of  negligence  in  marking  foot  (1),  as  a  little  consid- 
eration will  show.  Similarly,  foot  (4)  may  be  due  to  neglect  of  ad- 
jacent (l)'s  and  (2)'s,  and  foot  (4),  to  neglect  of  successive  (2)'s. 
One  would  expect  the  scansion  of  an  inexperienced  person  to  show  a 
greater  number  of  the  long  intervals  than  the  scansion  of  a  person 
who  had  marked  a'  large  number  of  pieces.  The  scansion  of  three  of 
the  markers  illustrates  this  point.  But  the  opposite  may  happen. 
The  inexperienced  marker  may  mark  too  minutely,  marking  word- 
accents  instead  of  sentence-accents.  This  seems  to  have  been  done 
by  (M.  K.). 

As  to  the  extent  to  which  the  figures  in  Table  I  may  be  taken  to 
be  typical  for  the  piece  of  writing  as  a  whole  from  which  each  selec- 
tion of  a  thousand  words  was  taken,  some  evidence  will  be  found  in 
Table  VI  and  VII. 

Each  of  the  selections  named  in  the  first  column  -of  Table  VI 
was  divided  in  half,  and  the  different  types  of  foot  in  each  half  were 
counted  just  as  they  had  been  in  the  wholes.  The  halves  ranged  in  size 
between  seven  and  eight  hundred  syllables.  The  figures  in  the  table 
have  been  reduced  to  a  common  denominator  of  500. 

In  Table  VII  are  given  the  figures  resulting  from  L.  T.'s  scansion 
of  the  first  and  second  consecutive  thousand  words  of  Cooper's  "Eed 
Rover." 


16 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE. 


TABLE  VI. 


(0) 

(1) 

(2) 

(3) 

(4) 

(5) 

KIPLIX«—  I.  K.  M.  .  .  . 

...   17 

47 

59 

36 

10 

3 

IS 

54 

r,-j 

28 

24 

5 

Rt'SKlx  —  S.  L  

.  .  .   15 

49 

51 

31 

19 

S 

15 

46 

4.-, 

33 

15 

5 

MlLTOX   

..  .   19 

.VJ 

37 

50 

10 

3 

10 

58 

44 

35 

16 

3 

BHOW.NK  

...   15 

57 

60 

30 

13 

2 

9 

55 

56 

32 

8 

2 

CARLYC.E  

...   13 

57 

53 

29 

8 

2- 

19 

6tt 

47 

34 

10 

4 

LAMB  

...   11 

46 

50 

29 

17 

4 

6 

3« 

49 

30 

16 

6 

EMEKXOX  

.  ..   10 

58 

56 

30 

9 

6 



13 

49 

55 

35 

14 

ft 

IXGEUSOLL  

...   12 

73 

42 

26 

10 

4 

14 

61 

48 

29 

13 

3 

SPEXOEK  

...   10 

24 

39 

30 

].-• 

11 

0 

27 

35 

33 

19 

12 

HUXLEY  —  Pref  

...   10 

37 

50 

31 

15 

o 

8 

37 

43 

27 

15 

2 

TABLE  VII. 


COOPER'S  "Red  Rover"  (L.  T.). 


(0) 


(i) 


(4) 


(6) 


(7) 


1st     1,000  .  .  . 

.  .875 

56.25 

82.50 

71.25 

40.6? 

14.37 

6  25 

2nd.    1,000... 

..6.79 

56.23 

78.48 

69.83 

42.02 

19.16 

4.32 

.61 

Let  us  now  return  to  Table  I.  The  selections  were  taken  from 
authors  of  the  most  diverse  styles.  Then-  \v.;s.  of  course,  no  need  of 
establishing  the  fact  of  the  widest  diversities  by  experiments  in  ap- 
preciation. That  Stevenson's  style,  for  example,  is  extremely  differ- 
ent from  Cooper's  will  be  disputed  r>\  no  one.  Innumerable  printed 
opinions  have  given  expression  to  this  judgment.  A  similar  consen- 
sus of  opinion  may  be  confidently  assumed  as  to  the  fact  of  diversity 
between  such  styles  as  that  of  Euskin's  "Modern  Painters"  and  that 
of  Lamb's  "Essays  of  Elia,"  between  Burke  and  Ingersoll,  between 
Herbert  Spencer  and  William  James,  between  Addison  and  Carlyle, 
between  the  Times  and  the  Journal. 

The  figures  in  the  table,  so  far  as  these  very  dissimilar  styles  are 
concerned,  at  least,  vary  in  sympathy  with  the  estimate  of  literary 
criticism.  Carlyle  and  Addison  are  a  strongly  contrasted  pair.  The 
epithets  applied  most  often  to  Carlyle's  style  are  "vigorous"  and 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  17 

"emphatic,"  while  Addison's  writing  is  characterized  as  "smooth" 
and  "urbane."  To  a  person  scanning  styles  such  as  these  two,  the 
difference  is  felt  to  be  one  between  strong  or  distinct,  and  weak  and 
vague  accentuation.  One  scanning  a  vaguely  accentuated  style  will 
pass  over  a  relatively  large  number  of  syllables  without  marking  an 
accent.  In  a  strongly  accentuated  style  the  accents  marked  are 
numerous  and  close  together.  This  is  shown  in  the  table  by  the 
great  excess  of  (4)'s,  (5)'s  and  (6)'s  in  Addison  over  Carlyle,  and  the 
excess  of  (0)'s  in  Carlyle  over  Addison. 

Similar  differences  may  be  seen  in  the  table  between  Burke  and 
Ingersoll,  Spencer  and  James,  Cooper  and  Stevenson,  the  Times  and 
the  Journal.  Comparing  the  figures  in  column  (0)  with  one  another, 
and  those  in  columns  (4),  (5),  and  (6),  we  should  class  Lamb,  De 
Quincey,  Johnson  and  Howells  with  Addison;  and  Barrie,  Kipling, 
Browne,  H.  James,  Euskin  M.  P.,  with  Carlyle. 

We  now  pass  to  consider  columns  (1)  and  (2).  These  two 
columns,  as  has  been  remarked  before,  represent  radically  different 
types  of  rhythm.  "Iambic"  or  "trochaic"  with  reference  to  (1),  and 
"anapaestic"  or  "dactyllic"  with  reference  to  (2),  are  objectionable 
terms ;  both  because  no  distinctions  between  "iambic"  and  "trochaic," 
or  "anapaestic"  and  "dactyllic"  were  made  in  scanning,  and  because 
these  terms  carry  inplications  of  classical  prosodic  theory  that  are  in- 
applicable. The  term  "duple"  for  the  shorter  foot,  and  "triple"  for 
the  longer,  will  be  used.  Each  of  these  may  be  again  characterized, 
if  necessary,  as  "rising"  or  "falling,"  according  as  the  accent  comei 
last  or  first  in  the  foot. 

Taking  two  contrasted  styles  like  Ruskin's  "Modern  Painters" 
and  Lamb's  "Essays,"  we  note  that  the  one  has  a  large  excess  of 
(l)'s  over  (2)'s,  the  other  of  (2)'s  over  (l)'s.  Ruskin's  style,  then, 
we  should  say  is  markedly  duple  in  this  selection;  Lamb's  triple. 
For  similar  reason^  we  would  affirm  that  the  styles  of  Stevenson, 
Barrie,  Dickens,  Milton,  Carlyle,  Ingersoll,  the  Journal,  Kipling's 
"In  the  Matter  of  a  Private,"  exhibit  marked  duple  rhythm;  while 
Huxley,  Darwin,  W.  James,  H.  James  in  "The  Ambassadors," 
Howells,  Holmes,  Kipling  in  "The  Incarnation  of  Krishna  Mul- 
vaney,"  have  a  predominant  triple  rhythm.  The  degree  of  duple  or 
triple  should  be  estimated  by  the  degree  of  excess  of  (l)'s  over  (2)'s 
or  vice  versa.  But  low  amounts  of  both  (as  in  the  case  of  Spencer) 
even  though  there  be  a  considerable  excess  of  one  over  the  other  can- 
not constitute  a  rhythm,  for  they  may  both  be  scattered  through- 
out the  piece  of  writing  as  isolated  groups  of  syllables,  not  as  groups 
of  "feet."  Large  amounts  of  both,  on  the  other  hand  (as  in  the  case 
of  Browne),  even  though  neither  predominate,  indicate  rhythm,  a 
mingling  or  alternation  of  duple  and  triple. 


18 


RHYTHM    /A'    PROSE. 


in 

P 


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o 

CQ 


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w 
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»—  I 
EH 

P 

PQ 

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PH 
O 


CQ 
o 
W 


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H 
CO 


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pq 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 


19 


CO 

O 


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g  1 

y    o 

PH      ^ 


w 
w 


O 
i^-( 

H 
P 

PQ 

2 

H 


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PM 
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is 

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20  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

In  the  best  of  duple  rhythms  there  will  be  found  a  certain  amount 
of  (2)'s.  "The  Princess,"  which  is  duple  rhythm  by  a  great  artist,  is 
instructive  on  this  point.  Some  of  the  (2)'s  there  are  due  to  syl- 
lables intended  to  be  hurried  or  slurred  in  reading.  Others  arise  from 
the  substitution  here  and  there  of  a  duple  falling  for  a  duple  ris- 
ing foot — a  permissible  procedure  in  blank  verse — which  brings 
the  unaccented  syllables  of  two  feet  together.  Amid  triple  rhythm, 
by  the  opposite  process  of  lengthening  syllables,  duple  feet  may  be 
inserted  without  breaking  the  rhythm. 

The  figures  in  column  (3)  are  to  be  interpreted  in  two  ways. 
They  indicate  partly  failure  to  mark  accents  in  successive  duple  feet. 
This  point,  too,  is  illustrated  in  "The  Princess."  It  probably  ac- 
counts for  the  large  number  of  (3)'s  in  Milton  and  Stevenson.  But 
(3)'s  to  a  large  extent  constitute  a  distinct  type  of  rhythm.  It  will 
be  remembered  that  Aristotle  recommended  this  type,  which  he 
called  the  "paeonic,"  as  the  most  suitable  for  prose.  A  few  phrases 
of  English  from  the  selections  that  were  scanned  will  show  the  char- 
acter of  this  foot. 

In  the  first  from  Macaulay's  "Boswell,"  the  (3)'s  are  alternated 
quite  regularly  with  other  intervals: 

All  the  caprices  of  his  temper,  all  the  illusions  of  his  vanity,  all 
his  castles  in  the  air. 

The  next  is  from  Johnson : 
He  sacrifices  virtue  to  convenience. 

And  this  from  Burke: 

If  anything  were  wanting  to  this  necessary  operation  of  the  form 
of  government,  religion  would  have  given  it  a  complete  effect. 

This  type  of  foot  seems  to  be  comparatively  numerous  in  Burke, 
Webster,  Johnson,  Macaulay,  The  Times  reporter,  and  "The  Lady  of 
the  Aroostook." 

Column  (4)  has  already  been  discussed  in  connection  with  column 
(0).  It  does  not  represent  a  distinct  type,  but  is  a  resultant  of  weak 
and  vague  accentuation,  or  may  be  resolved  into  shorter  feet.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  the  columns  beyond  (4). 

The  assumption  has  been  made  once  or  twice  above  that  a  large 
amount  of  a  particular  type  of  foot  in  a  piece  of  writing  indicates  the 
presence  of  a  rhythm  of  that  type.  The  assumption  may  be  tested  by 
actual  counting.  This  was  done  for  portions  of  a  few  of  the  se- 
lections. The  first  200  feet  of  Stevenson,  Barrie,  Ruskin  (M.  P.), 
Cooper  and  Macaulay  were  plotted  and  counted  in  the  following  man- 
ner: 

A  dot  was  placed  one  unit  above  the  base  line  for  each  foot  of  type 
(0),  2  units  above  for  every  (1),  3  above  for  every  (2),  etc.,  separated 
horizontally  by  units  of  space.  Starting  at  the  beginning  of  the 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  21 

selection,  each  foot  was  given  a  dot  on  its  appropriate  altitude,  the 
dots  succeeding  each  other  in  the  same  order  as  the  feet  in  the  prose. 
The  dots  were  connected  by  straight  lines.  The  same  type  of  foot 
repeated,  gave  an  unbroken  horizontal  line.  A  change  from  one 
type  to  another  appeared  as  an  oblique  line.  By  counting  the 
dots  in  the  horizontal  lines  at  any  altitude  we  get  a  measure  of  the 
amount  of  rhythm  of  that  type.  Single  occurrences  appear  in  the 
diagram  as  angles. 

The  count  gave  the  following  results : 

TABLE  VIII. 


Duple  Rhythm 
per  cent. 

Triple  Rhythm 
per  cent. 

STEVENSON   

26 

5 

BABRIE    

18 

12 

RUSKIN     

22 

4 

MACADLAY     

12.5 

13 

COOPER     

8 

13.5 

In  the  Stevenson  prose,  that  is  to  say,  26  per  cent,  of  all  the  feet 
occurred  in  groups  of  two  or  more,  and  were  of  the  duple  type; 
5  per  cent,  occurred  in  groups  of  two  or  more  and  were  of  the  triple 
type.  In  Cooper's  prose  the  duple  feet  that  occurred  in  groups  of 
two  or  more  were  only  8  per  cent.,  while  the  triple  feet  so  occurring 
were  13.5  per  cent,  of  all  the  feet.  The  200  feet  that  were  counted 
comprised  about  400  words. 

It  should  be  observed  that  although  the  method  of  counting  above 
described  probably  gives  a  fair  comparative  measure  of  the  amount 
of  rhythm  in  each  passage,  it  by  no  means  gives  an  absolutely  correct 
measure.  The  angles  in  the  diagram  may  form  parts  of  a  complex 
rhythmical  pattern.  The  intrusion  of  feet  of  diverse  types  is  fre- 
quent, as  we  have  seen,  even  in  poetry  which  is  theoretically  all  in  one 
rhythm.  A  regular  alternation,  besides,  may  be  rhythmical  as  well 
as  a  uniform  repetition.  Each  alternating  pair  then  forms  one  com- 
plex group  which  is  repeated.  A  phrase  like  this  of  Ruskin's,  for  in- 
stance : 

"into  fantastic  semblances  of  fortress  towers," 

would  not  give  a  horizontal  line  in  the  diagram,  but  it  appears  to  be 
rhythmical. 

Our  next  inquiry  is  whether  a  writer  can  be  known  by  his  rhythm, 
as  measured  in  Tables  I  and  II,  in  everything  he  writes.  The  list 
of  works  scanned  includes  two  by  Ruskin,  three  by  Kipling,  two  by 
Howells,  two  by  James,  and  two  by  Huxley — (the  first  chapter  ati'l 
the  preface). 


22  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

Ruskin's  "Modern  Painters"  differs  very  much  in  Table  I  from  his 
"Sesame  and  Lilies."  The  one  is  highly  accentuated,  with  a  great 
number  of  duple  feet,  the  other  shows  moderate  accentuation,  with  a 
slight  preponderance  of  triple  feet,  and  more  than  the  average  of 
both  (4)'s  and  (0)'s  which  is  exceptional.  These  figures  seem  to 
conform  to  the  impression  made  by  the  two  styles  on  at  least  one 
reader.  The  passage  from  "Modern  Painters"  is  extraordinary  proae 
— a  description  of  sun-rise  in  the  Alps  and  a  palpable  effort  at 
rhythmical  writing.  "Sesame  and  Lilies"  is  didactic,  a  homily  to 
young  ladies  on  their  duties  and  privileges.  The  one  almost  breaks 
into  song;  the  other  is  uneven  and  spasmodic. 

Kipling's  three  stories  show  three  different  types  of  rhythm — 
duple,  triple  and  mixed.  Readers  of  Kipling  will  not  be  surprised 
at  this.  There  may  be  characteristics  in  his  style  that  would  enable 
one  to  distinguish  his  work  from  another  writer's  without  knowing 
the  authors,  yet  nothing  could  be  plainer  than  that  some  of  hia 
stories  move  very  differently  from  others.  Compare  for  instance  two 
such  extreme  kinds  as  "The  Big  Drunk  Draf"  with  "An  Habitation 
Enforced." 

Huxley's  Chapter  I  shows  a  greater  amount  of  accentuation  than 
his  Preface,  though  the  predominant  type  of  rhythm  is  the  same  in 
both.  The  two  selections  differ  in  'the  character  of  their  matter.  The 
Preface  discusses  the  place  of  Physiography  as  a  science,  its  import- 
ance in  an  educational  curriculum  and  the  best  ways  of  teaching  it. 
The  thought  is  strong,  the  vocabulary  abstract  and  polysyllabic.  It  is 
addressed  to  men  of  science.  In  Chapter  1,  technicalities  are  aban- 
doned and  the  author  faces  the  task  of  instructing  the  average  man 
in  the  elements  of  science.  The  movement  becomes  comparatively 
light  and  rapid. 

The  extracts  from  both  Howells  and  Henry  James  were  chosen 
with  the  view  of  testing  whether  there  had  been  a  change  of  style 
form  early  to  late  works.  The  critics  make  much  of  a  difference  in 
Henry  James'  style.  The  table  shows  that  there  has  been  a  change 
from  duple  rhythm  in  "Watch  annd  Ward"  to  triple  rhythm  in  "The 
Ambassadors."  The  average  foot  has  lengthened  slightly;  the  aver- 
age deviation  is  exactly  the  same;  the  average  word  is  a  trifle  shorter. 
The  relatively  high  number  of  (5)'s  indicates  greater  vagueness  of 
accentuation.  The  change  from  predominant  duple  to  predominant 
triple  rhythm  despite  the  slightly  shortened  word  length  is  significant, 
for  it  shows  that  the  change  has  been  brought  about  by  other  means — 
word-arrangement,  or  thought-form. 

Howells'  later  work,  "The  Landlord  at  Lion's  Head,"  shows  a 
greater  amount  of  triple  rhythm  than  his  earlier,  "Lady  of  the  Arooa- 
took."  The  average  foot,  the  average  deviation  and  the  average 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  23 

word  have  nevertheless  all  decreased.  There  are  fewer  (3)'s,  (4)'s, 
(5)'s  and  (6)'s.  All  these  .facts  seem  to  indicate,  that  Howells' 
style  has  become  more  decidedly  triple  rhythmically,  and  in  general 
more  clean-cut  and  distinct. 

It  appears  from  these  comparisons  that  a  writer's  style  is  not 
the  same  rhythmically  in  different  works,  whether  of  the  same  or 
of  different  periods  of  his  career.  And  this  generalization  based  upon 
a  count,  from  which  the  possibility  of  subjective  error  is  indeed  not 
excluded,  is  confirmed  by  the  purely  objective  test  of  the  average 
word-length.  The  difference  in  this  respect  between  Huxley's  Preface 
and  his  Chapter  I  is  considerably  greater  than  that  between  either 
of  these  and  the  selections  from  Darwin  or  Prof.  James.  The  dif- 
ference between  Kipling's  "In  the  Matter  of  a  Private"  and  his  "Man 
Who  Was,"  in  word-length,  is  greater  than  that  between  the  former 
of  these  and  Lamb  or  Macaulay.  A  greater  difference,  moreover,  is 
shown  by  this  objective  test  between  the  above-mentioned  stories  of 
Kipling,  than  between  the  two  by  Howells,  or  the  two  by  James, 
although  a  period  of  over  twenty  years  elapsed  between  the  writing 
of  each  of  these  pairs. 

Table  I  shows  no  agreement  among  writings  of  the  same  genre, 
excepting  the  group  of  scientists.  Novelists  and  essayists  display  all 
varieties  of  accentuation  and  rhythm.  Ingersoll  differs  markedly 
from  his  fellow  orators.  The  two  journalistic  styles  form  a  strong  con- 
trast. But  although  Spencer  is  extreme  in  his  very  low  degree  of 
accentuation,  he  agrees  with  the  other  scientists  in  having  a  predomi- 
nance of  triple  feet. 

Some  illustrations  will  now  be  given  to  show  the  distinctness  with 
which  prose  rhythm  occurs  in  different  rhythmical  types.  The 
first  is  a  sentence  from  "The  Little  Minister"  in  perfect  duple 
rhythm : 

"When  Gavin  came  to  Thrums,  he  was  as  1  am  now,  for  the 
pages  lay  before  him  on  which  he  was  to  write." 

The  next  is  a  sentence  from  Macaulay's  "Essay  on  Milton,"  in 
which  triple  rhythm  is  dominant: 

On  the  rich  and  the  eloquent,  on  nobles  and  priests,  they  looked 
down  with  contempt;  for  they  esteemed  themselves  rich  in  a  more 
precious  treasure  and  eloquent  in  a  more  sublime  language,  nobles 
by  the  right  of  an  earlier  creation  and  priests  by  the  imposition  of 
a  mightier  hand. 

In  the  following  from  Jeremy  Taylor  there  is  an  alternation  of 
duple  and  triple : 

It  bowed  the  head  and  broke  its  stalk,  and  at  night  having  lost 
some  of  its  leaves  and  all  its  beauty,  it  fell  into  the  portion  of 
weeds  and  outworn  faces. 


24  RHYTHM    IN    PROSE. 

Finally  a  passage  from  the  writing  of  Thompson-Seton  is  given, 
arranged  as  regular  blank  verse: 

So  in  this  land  of  long,  long  winter  night, 
Where  nature  stints  her  joys  for  six  hard  months, 
Then  owns  her  debt  and  pays  it  all  at  once, 
The  spring  is  glorious  compensation  for  the  past. 
Six  months'  arrears  of  joy  are  paid  in  one 
Vast  lavish  outpour.1 

The  Bible  is  a  great  treasury  of  rhythmical  English  prose.  Ex- 
amples of  sentences  in  perfect  triple  rhythm,  and  even  regular  hex- 
ameters, may  be  found  almost  anywhere  in  the  book.  A  few  such, 
from  a  larger  collection,  are  here  given: 

How  art  thou  fallen  from  Heaven,  0  Lucifer,  son  of  the  morning. 
Is.  14:  :12. 

God  is  gone  up  with  a  shout,  the  Lord  with  the  sound  of  the 
trumpet.  Ps.  47  :  5. 

For  the  earth  shall  be  filled  with  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of 
the  Lord,  as  the  waters  cover  the  sea.  Hab.  2  :  4. 

We  have  eaten  and  drunk  in  thy  presence  and  thou  hast  taught 
in  our  streets.  Luke  18  :  26. 

He  looseth  the  bonds  of  kings  ,  and  girdeth  their  loins  with  a 
girdle.  Job  12  :  18. 

Mischief  shall  come  upon  mischief  and  rumor  shall  be  upon 
rumor.  Ps.  18  :  15. 

Cease  then  and  let  me  alone  that  I  may  take  comfort  a  little. 
Job  10  :  20. 

Be  as  the  sands  of  the  sea  which  cannot  be  measured  or  numbered. 
•Hos.  1  :  10. 

Wall  of  the  daughter  of  Zion.  let  tears  run  down  like  a  river. 
Lam.  2  :  18. 

A  few  examples  of  perfect  duple  rhythm  from  the  Bible  follow  : 

He  casteth  forth  his  ice  like  morsels, 

Who  can  stand  before  his  cold  ? 
He  giveth  snow  like  wool. 

Ps.  58. 

The  sea  and  all  that  in  them  is, 
Who  keepeth  truth  forever. 

Ps.  146. 


kfi  my  yoke  upon  you  and  learn  of  me.    Matt.  11  :  29. 

Death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory;     0,  death  where  is  thy  sting? 
0,  grave  where  is  thy  victory."  I  Cor.  xv. 

lAtliintio  Monthly,  90:283. 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  25 


Division  into  lines,  which  present  rhythmical  units  to  the  eye, 
is  one  of  the  principal  distinguishing  marks  of  poetry.  But  prose 
has  its  rhythmical  units  also.  These  are  not  presented  to  the  eye 
as  are  the  lines  of  poetry,  but  the  voice  in  reading  calls  attention  to 
them  by  pauses.  These  phrasal  sections  are  often,  but  not  always, 
marked  out  by  the  punctuation. 

The  part  of  the  sentence  before  the  copula,  the  subject,  usually 
forms  a  phrasal  section  of  the  kind  here  meant,  alihough  it  is  seldom 
separated  by  punctuation.  The  pause  after  the  statement  of  the 
subject  can  be  readily  perceived  in  one's  own  reading.  In  the  preced- 
ing sentence,  for  instance,  there  seems  to  the  writer  a  distinct  pause 
before  "can."  The  fact  has  been  verified  in  a  number  of  examples  by 
having  one  person  read  while  three  others  noted  the  pauses  by  writ- 
ing down  the  words  after  which  they  occurred.  There  is  no  pause 
after  the  subject  if  the  subject  is  very  short,  or  has  been  fully  sug- 
gested in  the  previous  sentence.  There  is  no  pause  after  "He"  in 
the  following  sentence.  "He  was  always  laying  himself  at  the  feet 
of  some  eminent  man."  The  real  subject  of  a  proposition  some- 
times does  not  coincide  with  the  grammatical  subject.  In  such  cases 
the  position  of  the  pause  indicates  the  true  division.  In  the  follow- 
ing sentence,  for  example,  it  is  after  "night,"  not  after  "It."  "It  was 
a  dark  night  between  two  sunny  days."  Compare  this  with  the  sen- 
tence that  succeeds  it  in  Macaulay's  text,  "The  age  of  the  Macenases 
had  passed  away,"  where  the  pause  divides  the  sentence  into  equal 
halves — the  subject  and  the  predicate. 

Considering  the  phrasal  section  in  prose  as  the  analogue  of  the 
verse  in  poetry,  the  question  arises  whether  the  phrases  within  a  given 
piece  of  prose,  like  the  verses  in  a  poem,  display  any  uniformity  of 
rhythmical  structure.  To  determine  this  point,  twenty  of  the  texts 
that  had  been  scanned  were  read  again  and  divided  into  phrasal  sec- 
tions. The  accents  in  each  phrase  were  then  counted.  Here  is  a 
passage  from  Macaulay  scanned  and  divided : 

What  silly  things  he  said  |  what  bitter  retorts  he  provoked  |  how 
at  one  place  he  was  troubled  with  evil  presentiments  |  which  came 
to  nothing  |  how  at  another  place  |  on  waking  from  a  drunken 
doze  |  he  read  the  Prayer-book  |  and  took  a  hair  of  the  dog  that  had 
bitten  him  |  how  he  went  to  see  men  hanged  |  and  came  away  maud- 
lin how  he  added  five  hundred  pounds  to  the  fortune  of  one  of  his 
babies  |  because  she  was  not  frightened  at  Johnson's  ugly  face  |  etc. 

Table  IX  gives  in  percentages  the  number  of  phrases  in  each 
selection  that  contained  one,  two,  or  more  accents — as  indicated  at 
the  head  of  each  column.  Decimals  have  been  omitted. 


26 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE. 


TABLE  IX. 


(Accents  per  phrase.) 


BARBIE  

6 

26 

33 

23 

8 

1 

% 

% 

KIPLING  —  I.  M.  P  

8 

24 

28 

21 

9 

6 

1 

HOWELLS'  —  L.  L.  H  

4 

20 

28 

18 

12 

8 

3 

2 

DICKENS'  

6 

29 

31 

19 

6 

4 

1 

RUSKIN  —  M.  P  

4 

29 

29 

16 

12 

3 

2 

1 

MILTON  

11 

19 

33 

22 

6 

5 

1 

BROWNE  

10 

24 

44 

12 

6 

1 

JOHNSON  

7 

32 

31 

19 

7 

1 

DE  QUINCEY  

15 

21 

29 

21 

5 

5 

CARLYLE  

22 

31 

29 

11 

4 

MACAULAY  

12 

23 

27 

23 

7 

3 

1 

LAMB  —  P.  R  

6 

28 

41 

16 

2 

1 

1 

EMERSON  

7 

22 

38 

18 

5 

HOLMES  

6 

26 

26 

18 

12 

3 

4 

1 

BURKE  

11 

29 

26 

18 

9 

1 

1 

1 

WEBSTER  

8 

15 

28 

20 

9 

3 

1 

1 

JNGERSOLL  

21 

36 

26 

10 

2 

1 

Times  (Rep.)  

6  ' 

35 

32 

14 

9 

1 

Journal  

22 

29 

30 

10 

7 

2 

W.  JAMKS  

7 

21 

31 

24 

9 

3 

1 

Averages  

10 

26 

33 

13 

7 

3 

1 

A.  D  

4.7 

4.4 

The  distributions  shown  in  Table  IX  are  so  much  alike  that  we  can- 
not on  the  strength  of  them  infer  distinctive  rhythmical  types  for 
various  selections.  .  There  are,  however,  a  few  exceptions.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne,  Lamb  and  Emerson  have  phrases  with  three  accents,  much 
above  the  average.  This  must  be  regarded  as  indicating  another  rhyth- 
mical effect  in  addition  to  that  discussed  in  connection  with  Table  I. 
The  figures  in  Table  I  were  rather  disappointing  for  Browne's  style, 
in  view  of  his  great  reputation  as  a  writer  of  rhythmical  prose.  The 
figures  in  Table  IX  supplement  those  of  Table  I  and  give  a  more  satis- 
factory explanation  of  his  reputation.  Lamb,  it  is  known,  modeled 
his  style  to  a  great  extent  on  Browne's.  His  high  percentage  in 
column  3,  almost  as  high  as  Browne's,  seems  more  than  a  mere  co- 
incidence. In  column  2,  we  notice  Ingersoll's  and  the  Times  re- 
porter's high  figures.  So  far  as  Ingersoll  is  concerned,  we  seem  to 
have  a  correct  register  of  the  short-phrased,  staccato  style  character- 
istic of  him. 

We  note  next  that  Table  IX  appears  to  show  a  central  tendency  as 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  27 

a  whole  in  column  3.  The  fact  is  suggestive  of  Wundt's  "Gesetz  der 
drei  Stufen."1  Three  accents  form  a  sort  of  natural  unit-group,  per- 
mitting discrimination  of  "much,"  "more"  and  "most."  A  Ger- 
man sentence  accented  and  divided  by  him  is  of  interest.  The  acute, 
the  grave  and  the  double-acute  accents  indicate  different  intensities. 

"Als  er  sich  den  Vorwurf  |  sehr  zuHerzen  zu  nehmen  schien  |  | 
und  immer  auf  s  neue  betheuerte  |  dass  er  gewiss  gern  mittheile  j  gern 
fiir  Freunde  thatig  sei  |  |  so  empfand  sie  |  dass  sie  sein  zartes  Gemiith 
verletzt  habe  |  und  sie  fiihlte  sich  als  seine  Schuldnerin." 

Here  are  a  few  English  sentences  from  Lamb  to  illustrate  the 
phrase  of  three  accents,  degrees  of  accent  and  pause  being  ignored: 

"His  deportment  was  of  the  essence  of  gravity  |  his  words  few  or 
none  |  and  I  was  not  to  make  a  noise  in  his  presence." 

Awful  ideas  of  the  Tower  |  twined  themselves  about  his  pres- 
ence. 

A  captive — a  stately  being  |  let  out  of  the  Tower  on  Saturdays. 

In  Wundt's  example  not  only  are  accents  grouped  in  threes,  but 
also  phrases.  The  single  and  double  bars  indicate  shorter  and 
longer  pauses.  There  are  three  long  phrases,  made  up  of  shorter 
ones,  sometimes  three  also,  in  the  whole  sentence. 

The  number  of  phrases  per  sentence  (phrases  distinguished,  as 
before  said,  by  sensible  pauses)  was  counted  in  the  selections  named 
in  Table  IX.  A  central  tendency  appeared  in  only  two  or  three  cases. 
Emerson  had  44  per  cent,  of  two-phrased  sentences.  Burke  had  33 
per  cent,  of  three-phrased  sentences.  The  frequency  of  two-phrased 
sentences  in  Emerson  is  probably  due  to  his  large  proportion  of 
simple  sentences. 

The  question  may  be  raised  whether  we  have  a  right  to  speak  of 
the  "rhythm"  constituted  by  phrases  that  are  uniform  only  in  respect 
to  the  number  of  accents  contained  in  them,  disregarding  unaccented 
syllables.  Some  answer  to  this  question  was  given  in  the  early  part 
of  the  essay.  Another,  perhaps  more  forcible  one,  is,  that  poetry 
meant  to  be  and  accepted  as  rhythmical  has  been  in  many  languages 
constructed  on  exactly  this  principle.  The  rhythm  of  the  German 
Nibelungenliel  is  composed  of  main  accents,  the  unaccented  syl- 
lables not  being  counted.  The  same  principle,  besides  alliteration 
and  balance,  is  employed  in  Old-English  poetry.  In  the  earliest 
Anglo-Saxon  manuscripts  the  lines  were  written  in  the  same  way  as 
in  prose,  rhythmical  divisions  being  indicated  by  punctuation.  Later, 
the  lines  were  written  as  in  modern  poetry,  and  half-lines  were  marked 
by  punctuation;  or  the  half -lines  were  written  one  below  the  other 

i  Voelkerpsychologie,  Theil  1,  Bd.  2,  S.  391. 


28  RHYTHM    IN    PROSE. 

as  lines.    The  following  from  Piers  Plowman  is  an  illustration,  each 
line  as  printed  being  a  so-called  "half-line": 

There  preached  a  pardoner 

As  he  a  priest  were 
Brought  forth  a  bull 

With  many  bishop's  seals. 

In  habite  as  an  heremite 

Unholy  of  workes 
Went  wyde  in  this  world 

Wondres  to  here. 

Each  half-line  corresponds  closely  to  what  has  been  called  above 
a  phrasal  section.  Each  contains  two  "heavy"  words.1  The  "heavy" 
words  of  the  first  half-line  are  distinguished  by  an  alliterative  con- 
sonant, which  re-appears  in  the  "heavy"  word  of  the  second  half-line. 
The  number  of  unaccented  syllables  is  disregarded.  When  many, 
they  are  hurried  over.  We  have  here  a  rhythm  of  main  concepts  fol- 
lowing in  approximately  equal  times.  The  times  are  conditioned 
but  not  strictly  determined  by  the  intervening  unaccented  syllables. 

Most  scholars  now  hold  that  the  ancient  Hebrew  poets  considered 
only  the  syllables  receiving  the  accent.  The  subject  has  been  studied 
with  great  care  by  Sievers,  Konig  and  others.  Konig  points  out  that 
the  popular  poetry  heard  at  the  ^  present  day  in  Palestine  is  also  of 
this  character: 

"Lines  with  two,  three,  four  and  five  accented  syllables  may  be 
distinguished,  between  which  one  to  three  and  even  four  unaccented 
syllables  may  be  inserted,  the  poet  being  bound  by  no  definite  num- 
ber in  his  poem.  Occasionally  two  accented  syllables  are  joined. 
.  .  .  .  The  symmetry  and  variation  being  determined  by  emo- 
tion and  sentiment."1 

The  metrical  theory  which  Coleridge  meant  to  exemplify  in 
"Christabel,"  was  practically  the  same  as  that  here  described.  But 
Coleridge  held  that,  although  the  number  of  unaccented  syllables 
might  vary,  the  number  of  accents  must  remain  the  same  in  every 
line.  Something  of  the  same  sort  may  be  seen  in  Milton's  "Samson 
Agonistes,"  and  Whitman  ranges  from  the  strict  limits  of  modern 
conventional  verse  to  a  freedom  that  is  less  rhythmical  than  good 
prose. 

When  one  considers  the  comparatively  artificial  means  forced  upon 
poetry  for  rhythmical  purposes,  it  appears  as  if  rhythm  in  prose 
must  be  a  purely  accidental  effect.  A  little  study  will  convince  us 

1  Skeat,  Introd.  to  Piers  Plowman.     Clarendon  Press, 
i  Koenig  Stylistik,  Rhetoric,  Poetik,  p.  305,  1900. 


RHYTHM    IN   PROSE.  29 

that  prose  is  not  so  naive  and  helpless  as  we  might  suppose.  It  has  at 
command  a  variety  of  means  for  creating  rhythm. 

There  are  in  the  first  place  short  and  long  words.  Table  II  gave 
the  average  word-length  in  each  selection  along  with  the  average 
foot-length.  The  fact  of  correlation  between  the  two  is  apparent. 
On  applying  the  Pearson  formula  for  the  coefficient  of  correlation  we 
get  r  —  .76 — which  is  high.1  This  means  that  to  a  large  extent  short 
"feet"  go  together  with  short  words,  and  long  "feet"  with  long  words. 

The  correlation,  as  the  coefficient  shows,  is  not  perfect.  Barrie's 
prose  has  the  fewest  syllables  per  word  in  the  table,  next  to  the  blank 
verse  of  "The  Princess."  But  his  average  foot,  though  short,  is  not 
the  shortest.  Ruskin's  "Modern  Painters"  comes  next  in  word-length, 
but  is  shortest  in  foot-length.  Spencer  has  both  the  longest  foot- 
length  and  word-length.  Howells'  L.  L.  H.,  Webster,  and  Huxley's 
Preface,  on  the  other  hand,  which  have  the  same  average  foot- 
length,  show  considerable  variety  of  word-length. 

Choice  of  words  is  partly  dependent  on  the  nature  of  the  sub- 
ject, but  to  a  large  extent  it  is  an  outcome  of  the  writer's  personality. 
It  may  be  wholly  a  matter  ot  individual  taste  whether  in  a  certain 
context  one  shall  write,  "man,"  "human  being,"  "gentleman."  "im- 
mortal soul,"  "old  boy,"  "chap,"  or  "fellow."  He  may  know  all  these 
words,  but  his  selection  will  be  dependent  on  his  feelings,  his  mood 
and  his  training. 

Flaubert's  maxim,  that  for  every  position  in  a  sentence  there  is 
but  one  right  word,  is  a  proposition,  like  the  dogma  of  predestination 
in  general,  that  cannot  be  proved  or  disproved.  It  is  true  that  hav- 
ing once  begun  a  phrase  in  a  particular  way  a  writer  is  bound  to  con- 
tinue in  the  same  form  of  construction,  and  having  written  one  kind 
of  word  another  of  a  certain  kind  is  expected  to  follow.  But  within 
these  limits  his  liberty  is  great.  The  actually  written  word  holds 
the  field  by  right  of  possession,  and  rarely  does  a  reader  take  the 
trouble  to  re-think  the  thought  in  different  language.  It  is  the 
writer's  privilege  to  express  the  thought  as  it  is  in  his  own  rather  than 
in  the  reader's  mind.  The  reader  may  sometimes  say  that  he  him- 
self would  not  have  written  so,  but  he  cannot  say  that  the  writer  has 
not  written  what  he  intended. 

Something  of  the  individual  liberty  of  the  writer  is  well  illus- 
trated in  the  following  couple  of  sentences  from  Thackeray's  "Vanity 
Fair": 

"Love  was  Miss  Amelia  Sedley's  last  tutoress,  and  it  was  amazing 
what  progress  our  young  lady  made  under  that  popular  teacher.  In 

i  Thorndike,  Mental  and  Social  Measurements,  p.  123,  1904. 


30  RHYTHM   IN    PROSE. 

the  course  of  fifteen  or  eighteen  months'  daily  attention  to  this  emi- 
nent finishing  governess,  what  a  deal  of  secrets  Amelia  learned." 

There  are,  no  doubt,  subtle  differences  of  meaning  between  "Miss 
Amelia  Sedley,"  "our  young  lady"  and  plain  "Amelia";  between 
"tutoress,"  "popular  teacher"  and  "eminent  finishing  governess." 
But  who  will  say  that  mere  sound  did  not  play  an  important  part  in 
determining  the  selection  of  these  synonyms?  "It  sounds  better,"  is 
a  principle  of  rhetoric  often  invoked  by  school-children.  Perhaps 
their  reason  is  more  nearly  right  than  their  reproving  teachers 
usually  admit.  Madame  de  Stael  is  said  to  have  taken  great  pleasure 
in  listening  to  meaningless  verses.  "That  is  what  I  call  poetry,"  she 
would  say;  "it  is  delicious  and  so  much  the  more  that  it  does  not 
convey  a  single  idea  to  me." 

Prof.  James  refers  to  the  uncritical  way  in  which  meaningless  com- 
binations of  words  in  prose  are  often  read.1  The  illusion  of  a  mean- 
ing, he  thinks,  is  due  to  the  correctness  of  the  grammatical  structure 
and  to  the  fact  that  the  words  belong  to  the  same  special  vocabulary, 
in  the  same  language.  A  conventional  rhythm  seems  also  to  con- 
tribute to  the  effect.  In  the  example  he  quotes  from  a  newspaper 
reporter:  "The  birds  filled  the  tree-tops  with  their  morning  song, 
making  the  air  moist,  cool  and  pleasant,"  it  seems  that  the  reporter 
was  bound  to  have  an  evenly  divided  sentence  with  a  rise  and  a  sus- 
pension of  the  voice  in  the  middle.  Had  he  put  a  full  stop  after 
"song,"  omitted  "making"  and  supplied  a  copula  for  his  second  sen- 
tence, he  would  have  written  sense,  but  his  tune  would  have  been 
gone.  The  presence  of  the  tune  induces  the  reader  to  overlook  such 
a  minor  slip  as  that  of  bird-songs  making  the  air  moist.  The  three 
adjectives  at  the  close  of  the  sentence  are  additional  evidence  that 
the  writer  was  being  led  by  a  preconceived  rhythm. 

Arrangement  of  words  is  another  means  of  controlling  rhythm 
in  prose.  The  order  of  words  in  a  sentence  is  in  large  measure  fixed 
by  the  conventionalities  of  syntax.  It  is  more  rigidly  prescribed 
in  analytical  languages  like  English  and  French  than  in  inflectional 
languages  like  Greek  and  Latin.  In  the  former,  the  order  of  the 
words  is  depended  upon  to  show  the  grammatical  relations,  an  office 
that  in  the  latter  is  performed  by  word-endings.  Transpositions  in 
the  inflectional  languages  produce  changes  of  emphasis  without  con- 
fusing grammatical  relations.  "Eomulus  Romam  condidit"  may  be 
said  in  six  different  ways — with  every  possible  transposition  of  the 
words.  The  meaning  in  each  case  is  clear;  the  emphasis  different. 
In  English  the  subject  of  the  verb  must  as  a  rule  precede  it  in  order 
to  be  known  as  the  subject. 

i  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  1,  p.  268. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  31 

This  fixedness  of  the  order  of  words  in  English  may,  however, 
easily  be  exaggerated.  There  is  no  lack  of  clearness  in  this  sentence 
of  Carlyle's,  "Him  Heaven  had  kneaded  of  much  more  potent  stuff," 
nor  would  there  be  in  a  different  transposition  like,  "Of  much  more 
potent  stuff  had  Heaven  kneaded  him."  Anthony  Trollope  writes, 
"Her  it  was  his  custom  to  visit  early  in  the  afternoon" ;  .  which  might 
also  be  written,  "To  visit  her  early  in  the  afternoon  was  his  cus- 
tom," or  "His  custom  was  to  visit  her  early  in  the  afternoon." 

The  general  principle  underlying  the  order  in  which  words  occur 
in  a  sentence  is,  that  the  portion  of  thought  most  vivid  in  the  speak- 
er's or  writer's  mind  tends  to  get  itself  uttered  first.  The  order  of 
words  in  expression,  moreover,  tends  to  conform  to  the  order  of  per- 
ception. "Since  it  often  happens  that  some  striking  detail  arrests 
the  attention  first,  while  the  more  important  event  only  shows  later, 
or  an  obvious  effect  is  more  apparent  than  its  hidden  cause,  so  the 
same  order  is  more  effective  in  language  discourse."1  The  instant 
of  conception  and  utterance  is  the  important  moment  in  expression. 
Individuality  is  stamped  upon  the  thought  at  this  moment,  and  one 
of  the  marks  of  this  individuality  is  the  order  in  which  the  Avords 
are  produced. 

The  importance  of  the  order  of  words  has  been  recognized  by 
both  ancient  and  modern  rhetoricians.  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus 
claimed  that  the  choice  of  words  was  not  of  as  much  importance  as 
their  arrangement.  The  ancients  taught  that  the  order  of  words 
should  be  determined  by  the  more  or  less  harmonious  collocation  of 
the  letters  at  the  end  and  beginning  of  words  that  follow  each  other, 
by  the  rhythmic  movement  of  successive  long  and  short  syllables,  and 
by  effects  of  euphony  of  which  the  ear  alone  is  competent  to  judge.2 

The  nature  of  the  transition  from  thought  to  thought  has  an 
influence  in  helping  or  hindering  the  rhythm  of  prose.  The  reader 
requires  sequence  of  time  in  narration,  some  definite  order  of  space 
relationship  in  description,  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  of  sub- 
ordination and  coordination  or  of  unfolding  and  explanation  of  con- 
cepts. The  presence  of  such  clearly  perceived  ties  produces  smooth- 
ness and  easily  moving  style.  Their  absence  results  in  incoherency. 
Ellipses,  digressions,  collateral  ideas  check  the  flow  of  thought. 
Rhythm  becomes  impossible. 

Not  only  in  the  choice  and  arrangement  of  his  words  and  in  his 
method  of  joining  thought  with  thought  has  the  writer  of  prose  in- 
dividual liberty,  but  he  may  modify  the  very  form  and  substance  of 
his  thought  to  suit  his  purpose.  It  is  often  a  matter  of  no  conse- 

1  Lotze,  Mikr.    Bk.  IV,  eh.  3.  (trans,  by  Hamilton  and  Jones,  1886.) 

2  Weil,  "Order  of  Words,"  p.  11. 


32  RHYTHM    IN    PROSE. 

quence  to  him  what  the  particular  character  of  a  proposition  in  a 
given  place  in  his  discourse  shall  be.  What  he  is  interested  in  is  the 
further  thought  to  which  it  leads.  It  may  make  no  difference  to  him 
whether  he  say,  "A  full  moon  shone  in  the  heavens,"  or  "It  was  a 
bright  moonlight  night,"  or  "The  earth  was  suffused  with  a  kind 
of  weak  daylight."  The  point  he  wishes  to  make  is  that  a  certain 
thing  could  be  seen.  So  he  attain  his  end,  it  does  not  much  matter 
whether  the  statement  that  gets  him  there  be  active  or  passive,  literal 
or  figurative,  or  whether  he  use  one  figure  rather  than  another. 

In  his  use  of  figures  he  is  not,  however,  free  from  all  limitations, 
as  is  often  rashly  assumed.  He  must  obey  certain  natural  associations. 
Material  images  more  or  less  luminous  arise  spontaneously  in  the 
mind  with  every  thought  and  furnish  its  vestment.1  There  is  no 
creation  of  metaphors  in  good  writing;  there  is  but  a  limited  selec- 
tion. 

The  true  metaphor,  which  is  a  naming  by  one  term  of  two  con- 
cepts, arises  in  the  mind  at  the  moment  of  utterance  because  of  a 
resemblance  between  the  two  concepts  in  some  essential  particular 
and  an  actual  blending  of  the  two.2  When  the  poet  says,  "fear 
chalked  her  face,"  or  "  I  stole  from  court  cat-footed  through  the 
town,"  there  has  been  no  deliberate  putting  together  of  distinct 
images.  The  two  ideas  came  together  originally  and  have  not  been 
separated. 

Artificial  figures  affect  the  sensitive  reader  as  evidence  of  insin- 
cerity. Their  use  for  the  sake  of  rhythm  only  adds  to  the  impression 
that  there  is  an  attempt  at  imposition.  A  writer  on  nature  subjects 
has  the  sentence,  "All  the  eastern  sky  is  glowing  amber;  westward 
riding  high,  the  moon  stares  from  the  empyrean  of  cold  azure  washed 
with  silver,  a  disc  of  polished  brass."  We  feel  pretty  sure  the  writer 
of  that  did  not  see  all  the  images  in  the  relations  in  which  he  puts 
them  in  his  sentence.  If  he  insist  that  he  did,  we  must  conclude  that 
his  mind  works  in  ways  that  are  exceptional  and  abnormal.  The 
particular  figure  to  be  used  cannot  be  prescribed  or  predicted  from 
the  outside.  There  is  a  large  field  for  individual  variation,  but  the 
associated  images  must  be  recognized  as  occurring  together  in  some 
considerable  number  of  human  minds.  There  is  no  hesitation  gener- 
ally in  naming  metaphors  like  "hair  shot  through  with  sunset  spikes 
of  gold,"  and  lips  "with  musical  curves,"  false  and  strained. 


i  Emerson,  Nature,  Chapter  II. 

*  Buck,  "Metaphor,  a  Study  in  the  Psychology  of  Rhetoric,"  1800. 


RHYTHM    IN    PROSE.  33 

The  rhythms  that  have  occupied  our  attention  thus  far  have  been 
phonetic.  Accentual  rhythm  is  indeed  the  external  form  of  thought 
rhythm,  the  significant  in  thought  coinciding  with  the  phonetically 
accentuated.  But  there  are  thought  rhythms  not  so  closely  con- 
nected with  sound  rhythm.  Rhythms  of  this  sort  may  be  called 
logical.  The  rhythmical  units  are  thoughts  repeated  in  form  or  sub- 
stance, or  changing  in  a  regular  way.  It  will  be  convenient  to  intro- 
duce this  part  of  our  subject  by  reference  to  a  language  other  than 
English  in  which  the  principles  of  logical  rhythm  have  been  to  some 
extent  recognized  and  formulated. 

Biblical  scholars  have  termed  the  logical  rhythm  of  the  Bible 
"parallelism  of  members."  This  is  a  rhythm  over  and  above  that 
accentual  rhythm  of  the  Bible  already  referred  to.  The  Hebrew  text 
of  the  Bible  is  elaborately  punctuated  to  indicate  syntactical  and 
logical  groupings  of  words.1  The  characters  used  for  punctuating 
are  called  accents,  but  are  rather  of  the  nature  of  musical  notes  to 
guide  the  public  reader.  Different  degrees  of  coherence  and  of  separa- 
tion are  indicated  by  different  characters.  This  system  of  punctua- 
tion was  first  instituted  in  the  poetical  books  but  was  applied  later 
to  the  prose  books  also. 

The  principle  of  parallelism  predominates  in  the  poetical  books. 
The  parallelism  may  be  of  several  kinds.  The  first  and  second  mem- 
bers may  state  the  same  thought  in  different  words ;  the  second  mem- 
ber may  state  a  thought  antithetical  to  the  first;  the  second  member 
may  echo  or  supplement  the  first.  The  parallelism  may  also  subsist 
among  three  members.  In  such  case  all  three  may  be  coordinate 
expressions  of  the  same  thought,  or  the  last  two  may  supplement 
the  first,  or  the  first  two  may  be  coordinate  and  supplemented  by 
the  third.  The  main  divisions  in  all  these  cases  are  indicated  by  the 
principal  accent  or  punctuation  mark. 

Examples  of  these  parallelisms  are: 

Jehovah,   rebuke   me   not  in  thine   anger    |  j 
Neither  chasten  me  in  thy  hot  displeasure. 

A   soft   answer   turneth   away   wrath 
But  a  grievous  word  bringeth  up  anger. 

Life  he  asked  of  thee;  thou  has  given  it  him :  |  ] 
Length  of  days  forever  and  ever. 

They  have  hands  but  they  handle  not  | 
Feet  have  they  but  they  walk  not  1 1 
Neither  speak  they  through  their  throat. 

i  Wickes,  Accents  of  the  Prose  Books  of  the  Bible,  1881. 
"  "      Poetical     "          "  "     1887. 


34  RHYTHM   IN    PROSE. 

Each  member  of  each  group  is  further  subdivided  and  punctuated 
to  show  its  syntactical  and  logical  structure.  These  points  of  the 
second  order  are  placed  approximately  at  the  phonetic  middle  of 
each  clause,  tending  to  produce  evenly  balanced  groups  of  sounds, 
and  in  some  cases  where  adherence  to  the  logical  grouping  of  the 
words  would  result  in  an  unsymmetrical  division,  the  accent  is  shifted 
to  a  more  agreeable  position. 

In  this  subdivision  of  the  clauses,  phrasal  sections  are  marked 
out  corresponding  to  the  phrasal  sections  we  have  already  noted  in 
English.  The  principles  of  division  are  similar.  When  the  subject 
precedes,  it  is  generally  marked  off  from  the  rest  of  the  sentence : 

"And  the  earth  |  was  waste  and  void." 

When  the  object  precedes,  which  implies  that  it  is  to  be  especially 
emphasized,  it  is  marked  off: 

"A  laughing  stock   |    has  God  made  me." 

Adverbial  and  prepositional  phrases  at  the  beginning  of  a  sentence 
are  set  off: 

"As  for  the  man  |  he  found  no  helpmate." 

Turning  now  to  English^  we  find  that  balance  of  clauses  and 
phrases,  as  it  is  called,  differs  from  the  parallelism  of  the  Bible  only 
in  the  fact  that  the  principles  underlying  coordination  and  subordina- 
tion of  the  members  in  the  modern  language  are  of  greater  subtlety. 
The  relation  of  part  to  part  is  of  a  more  intellectual  character;  the 
connecting  links  are  more  finely  discriminated. 

In  the  "Euphuism"  of  the  sixteenth  century,  which  marks  the 
beginning  of  the  formation  of  an  English  prose  style1  parallelism 
and  balance  ran  riot.  Besides  alliteration,  consonance,  rhyme  and 
plays  upon  words,  we  find  a  profusion  of  twin  phrases  and  parallel 
clauses,  and  the  most  elaborate  antithesis  of  well-balanced  sentences. 
The  artificiality  of  the  euphuistic  style  is  what  most  impresses  a 
modern  reader.  But  the  same  devices  as  those  employed  there  may 
be  found  more  or  less  in  all  artistic  prose. 

We  may  take  for  example  the  first  paragraph  of  Macaulay's  Es- 
say on  BoswelPs  "Life  of  Johnson."1 

"The  Life  of  Johnson  is  assuredly  a  great — a  very  great  work. 
Homer  is  not  more  decidedly  the  first  of  heroic  poets,  Shakespeare 
is  not  more  decidedly  the  first  of  dramatists,  Demosthenes  is  not 
more  decidedly  the  first  of  orators,  than  Boswell  is  the  first  of  biog- 

i  Garnett,  "English  Prose  from  Elizabeth  to  Victoria,"  p.  4,  1801. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  35 

raphers.  He  has  no  second.  He  has  distanced  all  his  competitors 
so  decidedly  that  it  is  not  worth  while  to  place  them.  Eclipse  is 
first,  and  the  rest  nowhere." 

The  first  sentence  contains  repetition  in  the  predicate.  The 
rhythm  of  thought  in  the  second  sentence,  consisting  of  clauses 
of  the  same  form  but  of  different,  though  analogous,  meaning,  is 
obvious.  The  fourth  sentence  would  in  Biblical  style  be  expressed 
without  the  correlatives  "so — that."  These  words  in  the  English 
sentence  disguise  but  do  not  destroy  the  parallelism.  The  fifth  sen- 
tence is  distinctty  balanced. 

It  may  be  thought  that  Macaulay  is  exceptionally  fond  of  these 
effects.  But  open  a  book  by  a  very  different  sort  of  writer,  at  ran- 
dom. Let  it  be  Stevenson's  "Amateur  Emigrant."  The  chapter 
happens  to  be  "Steerage  Types."  The  first  sentence  of  the  first  para- 
graph contains  repetition  of  the  same  part  of  speech.  The  second 
sentence  is,  "Even  in  these  rags  and  tatters,  the  man  twinkled  all 
over  with  impudence  like  a  sham  piece  of  jewelry  |  and  I  have  heard 
him  offer  a  situation  to  one  of  his  fellow  passengers  with  the  air 
of  a  lord."  Here  the  second  member  states  specifically  what  the 
first  has  expressed  in  general  terms.  This  corresponds  to  the  form 
of  Biblical  parallelism  named  "synonymous," 

"0  Jehovah,  my  God,  thou  art  very  great, 
Thou  art  clothed  with  honor  and  majesty." 

The  third  sentence  is,  "Nothing  could  overlie  such  a  fellow;  [  a 
kind  of  base  success  was  written  on  his  brow."  This  is  of  the 
same  kind  as  the  preceding.  The  fourth  sentence:  "He  was  then  in 
his  ill  days ;  )  but  I  can  imagine  him  in  Congress  with  his  mouth  full 
of  bombast  and  sawder,"  is  antithetical.  The  next  two  sentences 
are  respectively  synonymous  and  antithetical :  "As  we  moved  in  the 
same  circle,  |  I  was  brought  necessarily  into  his  society."  "I  do 
not  think  I  ever  heard  him  say  anything  that  was  true,  kind  or 
interesting,  |  but  there  was  entertainment  in  the  man's  demeanor." 
The  last  sentence  of  the  paragraph  is  simple  and  the  only  one  that 
does  not  contain  balance  or  parallelism. 

If  it  be  objected  that  between  the  members  of  the  parallel  clauses 
that  have  been  cited  as  examples,  a  variety  of  logical  relationships 
may  be  discriminated,  and  is,  in  fact,  indicated  by  the  connecting 
particles,  it  should  be  observed  that  such  logical  relations  exist  be- 
tween the  members  of  the  Biblical  parallel  groups  also,  although  the 
connecting  particles  are  absent.  The  explicit  statement  of  the  logical 
relation  between  consecutive  clauses  is  even  in  modern  English  largely 
a  matter  of  taste  with  the  writer.  The  essential  thing  is  that  the 


36  RHYTHM   IN  PROSE. 

relation  be  there.  But  connectives  indicating  condition,  cause,  con- 
sequence, etc.,  are  not  wholly  lacking  in  Biblical  parallelism.  Con- 
dition, for  instance,  is  expressed  in, 

"Except  Jehovah  keep  the  city, 
The  watchman  waketh  but  in  vain." 
Causal  relation  is  expressed  in, 

"I  have  not  turned  aside  from  thy  judgments, 
For  thou  has  taught  me." 
ID 

Thou  are  my  hiding  place  and  my  shield 

I  hope  in  thy  word." 

The  causal  relation  is  just  as  clearly  given  without  a  connective. 

Repetitions  of  the  same  form  of  phrase  with  different  but  allied 
meaning  constitute  another  order  of  thought  rhythm.  A  celebrated 
passage  of  Burke's  will  illustrate  this: 

"Never,  never  more  shall  we  behold  that  generous  loyalty  to  rank 
and  sex,  that  proud  submission,  that  dignified  obedience,  that  sub- 
ordination of  the  heart,  which  kept  alive,  even  in  servitude  itself, 
the  spirit  of  an  exalted  freedom.  The  unbought  grace  of  life,  the  cheap 
defence  of  nations,  the  nurse  of  manly  sentiments  and  heroic  enter- 
prise is  gone.  It  is  gone,  that  sensibility  of  principle,  that  chastity 
of  honour  which  felt  a  stain  like  a  wound,  which  inspired  courage 
while  it  mitigated  ferocity,  which  ennobled  whatever  it  touched, 
and  under  which  vice  itself  lost  half  its  evil  by  losing  all  its  gross- 
ness." 

The  same  type  of  word  or  word-group  recurring — verb,  noun,  ad- 
jective, or  noun  with  adjective — gives  another  rhythmic  effect.  The 
last  sentence  of  Ingerspll's  lecture  on  "Domestic  Happiness"  may  be 
quoted  as  an  example : 

"I  would  rather  have  lived  and  died  unnoticed  and  unknown,  ex- 
cept by  those  who  loved  me,  and  gone  down  into  the  voiceless  silence 
of  the  dreamless  dust,  than  to  have  been  that  imperial  impersonation 
of  force  and  murder  who  covered  Europe  with  blood  and  tears." 

Orations  are  more  artificial  than  other  forms  of  prose.  But 
we  find  the  same  kind  of  rhythm  in  the  quietest  sort  of  writing. 
Scott,  for  instance,  has: 

"The  sun  was  setting  upon  one  of  the  rich,  glassy  glades  of  that 
forest  which  we  have  mentioned  in  the  beginning  of  the  chapter. 
Hundreds  of  broad-headed,  short-stemmed,  wide-branched  oaks," 
etc. — "in  some  places  they  were  intermingled  with  beeches,  hollies 
and  copsewood  of  various  descriptions  so  closely  as  totally  to  inter- 
cept the  level  beams  of  the  sinking  sun." 

And  in  the  still  more  placid  writing  of  Howells'  "London  Films" 
we  have: 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  37 

"It  was  having  apparently  the  time  of  its  life,  and  really  the  place 
was  enchanting  with  its  dose-cropped,  daisy-starred  lawns,  and  the 
gay  figures  of  polo  players  coming  home  from  a  distant  field  in  the 
pale  dusk  of  a  'brilliant  day  of  early  June." 

The  rhythm  of  parallelism  may  be  further  seen  in  proverbs  and 
catch-phrases,  which  are  intended  to  strike  the  attention  and  be  re- 
membered. "Man  proposes,  God  disposes."  "Words  are  the  counters 
of  the  wise  and  the  money  of  the  fools."  "Charity  creates  much  of  the 
misery  it  relieves,  but  does  not  relieve  all  the  misery  it  creates." 
"The  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number."  "High  life,  below 
stairs."  In  all  these  illustrations,  it  is  evident,  phonetic  rhythm 
accompanies  thought  rhythm  at  every  step. 

An  attempt  has  been  made  to  show  a  characteristic  rhythm  ol 
judgments  for  different  writers  by  counting  the  number  of  predi- 
cations in  each  sentence  and  finding  the  average  per  sentence  in  a 
large  number  of  periods.1  The  average  of  predications  per  sentence 
in  500  periods  of  any  author  who  has  "achieved  a  style,"  according 
to  Gerwig,  is  approximately  the  average  of  his  whole  book.  He  gives 
a  record  of  his  count  for  100  representative  authors.  The  figures 
showing  a  pretty  uniform  average  of  predications  per  sentence  in 
Macaulay  during  a  long  period  of  years,  are  here  reproduced: 

Number     Av.  Pred.  Per  cent. 

of  per  of 

Date.         Periods.      Period.  Simp.  sent. 


ROYAL  Soc.  OF  LIT  

1823 

100 

2.03 

44 

PANTB  

1824 

100 

2.15 

38 

MILTON  

1825 

895 

2.07 

38 

MACHIAVELLI  

1827 

693 

1.88 

47 

ESSAY  ON  HISTORY  

1828 

719 

2.18 

40 

DBYDBN  

1828 

ioa 

2.65 

29 

P'AHBLAY  

1843 

918 

2.31 

32 

ADDISON  

1843 

1331 

2.22 

32 

ATTERBUHY  

1853 

240 

2.35 

34 

BDNYAN  

1854 

245 

2.19 

31 

GOLDSMITH  

1856 

263 

2.29 

33 

2.17 

36 

Since  these  figures  represent  only  explicit  predications,  they  do 
not  really  give  us  a  census  of  judgments  in  these  works,  for  there 
are  various  ways  of  expressing  a  judgment  while  avoiding  explicit 
predication.  A  judgment  may  be  uttered  in  the  one  word  "Rain !" 
and  according  to  the  intonation  it  may  mean,  "The  rain  is  falling," 

*  Gerwig,  "On  the  Decrease  of  Predication,  etc."  U.  of  N.  Studies, 
vol.  II,  No.  1.,  1894. 


38  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

"The  rain  will  soon  fall,"  "I  fear  it  may  rain,"  etc.1  Explicit  predi- 
cation may  be  avoided  by  the  use  of  absolute  constructions — "Caesar 
having  reached  the  Rubicon";  by  appositives — "Caesar,  a  Roman, 
general";  by  conjunctions  without  copulas — "Caesar  was  a  Roman 
and  the  conqueror  of  Gaul";  by  prepositions  instead  of  conjunctions, 
copulas  or  conjunctions  with  copulas — "Caesar  was  a  Roman  with 
few  equals  in  military  genius";  by  phrases  for  clauses,  by  suggestive 
words  for  phrases,  by  present  and  past  participles.  A  uniform 
average  of  predications  in  successive  sections  of  a  prose  work,  there- 
fore, must  be  considered  as  indicating  a  rhythm  composed  of  judg- 
ments, indeed,  but  not  a  rhythm  formed  of  all  the  judgments. 

Sherman  has  found  that  every  writer  has  a  characteristic  sen- 
tence rhythm  throughout  his  works.2  Historically  the  English  sen- 
tence has  been  diminishing  in  length  from  the  pre-Elizabethan  age 
to  the  present  time.  Fabyan,  the  earliest  writer  studied,  has  an 
average  sentence  length  of  63.02  words;  Spenser's  average  is  49.82; 
Hooker's,  41.40;  Macaulay's,  22.45;  Channing's,  25.73;  Emerson's, 
20.58. 

The  constancy  of  the  average  sentence  length  in  successive  sec- 
tions of  a  given  writer's  prose  may  be  seen  in  the  following  tables 
taken  from  Sherman's  "Analytics  of  Literature." 

DE  QUINCEY.     Average  Sentence  Length  in  Words. 


1st  100  

29,74 

12th  100  

34.42 

2d   "  

38.62 

13th  "  

29.57 

3d   "  

29.82 

14th  "  

38.58 

4th  "  

31.22 

15th  "  

35.32 

5th  "  

34.21 

16th  '  

40.29 

6th  "  

29.09 

17th  "  

39.29 

.7th  "  

30.39 

18th  "  

38.12 

8th  "  

32.93 

19th  "  

31.24 

9th  "  

33.92 

20th  "  

30.76 

10th  "  

32.88 

21st  "  

33.57 

llth  "  

34.09 

22d   "  

32.09 

The  average  of  all  the  periods  is  33.25 ;  the  mode  is  about  33. 
The  averages  for  each  thousand  consecutive  sentences  of  Macau- 
lay's  "History  of  England,"  are  as  follows: 

1  Ladd,  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory,  p.  460,  1894. 

2  Sherman.  Analytics  of  Literature,  1893. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  39 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.     Average  Sentence  Length. 


26.09 

23.00 

22.21 

20.54 

24.21 

25.33 

25.06 

25.01 

24.20 

21.76 

22.33 

24.97 

23.51 

21.59 

24.81 

22.92 

24.99 

24.10 

24.05 

23.71 

22.13 

19.62 

21.81 

23.26 

22.36 

21.11 

23.39 

22.81 

20.85 

25.58 

22.39 

23.91 

21.08 

25.86 

23.17 

24.92 

23.81 

23.81 

24.03 

25.28 

23.33  23.18  23.32  23.73 


The  variability  of  the  length  of  the  sentence,  within  each  series, 
however,  is  great,  in  modern  authors.  Macaulay's  long  sentences  are 
very  long.  Three  consecutive  paragraphs  taken  at  random  from  New- 
man's "Historical  Sketches,"  show  the  following  sentence  lengths: 

26  —  41  —  34  —  36  —  19  —  21  —  19  —  18 

28  -      9  _  61  —  40  —  30  —  31  —  37 
45  _  32  _  92 

The  last  four  sentences  of  the  first  paragraph  are  so  nearly  equal 
in  length  that  they  form  a  rhythmical  group.  The  last  sentence 
seems  abnormally  long.  But  such  great  variability  as  we  see  here 
is  more  apparent  than  real,  for  the  position  of  the  full  stop  is 
arbitrarily  determined.  Another  writer  would  be  just  as  likely  to 
make  three  sentences  of  that  long  one,  punctuating  with  periods  where 
Newman  uses  the  colon,  semi-colon,  and  comma  with  dash.  There 
is  good  reason,  in  fact,  for  considering  the  paragraph  rather  than 
the  sentence  the  true  unit  of  discourse,  since  the  only  positive  rule 
for  pointing  off  sentences  is  to  choose  the  longer  breaks  in  the  sense.1 
Statements  that  would  be  independent  sentences  if  standing  alone  are 
often  united  into  one  sentence  when  they  are  parts  of  a  paragraph. 
A  writer  sees  the  topics  of  his  discourse  as  hazy  paragraphs,  which 
he  proceeds  to  analyze  and  define  in  sentences. 

There  is  in  some  authors  a  marked  tendency  toward  uniformity 
in  length  of  paragraphs.  Macaulay  was  found  by  Lewis  to  have  the 
greatest  amount  of  paragraph  rhythm.  His  "History  of  England" 
gave  the  following  averages  per  volume:  258.11,  251.52,  325.44,  336.- 
60,  306.90.  Authors  of  regular  methods  show  a  general  tendency 
toward  approximate  uniformity  in  the  paragraph  averages  of  different 
sections  of  their  works. 

iBain,  "English  Composition,"  §  157,  1886. 


40  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

The  foregoing  studies  of  prose  rhythm  point  to  the  conclusion 
that  style  and  rhythm  in  prose  are  to  a  very  large  extent  identical. 
Rhythm  in  prose  plays  the  same  part  that  voice,  gesture  and  facial 
expression  play  in  oral  speech.  And  just  as  we  practically  never 
have  expressionless  speech,  so  we  never  have  rhythmless  or  styleless 
prose. 

Writers  on  Rhetoric  differ  in  their  use  of  the  term  "style."  Spen- 
cer, Lewis,  and  Hodgson,  for  example,  mean  by  the  word  simply  "the 
mode  of  handling  language  for  a  purpose,  whatever  the  purpose  may 
be  and  whatever  the  occasion."1  Prof.  Genung,  on  the  other  hand, 
speaks  of  styleless  writing  and  quotes  a  passage  conveying  statistical 
information  in  illustration.2  "I  have  stated  the  taxable  value  of  all 
the  property  of  Texas,"  it  runs,  "at  six  hundred  and  three  millions. 
Let  me  enumerate,  in  round  numbers,  a  few  of  the  items  which  go 
to  make  up  that  sum.  The  land  is  counted  at  about  two  hundred 
and  forty-seven  millions,"  etc.,  etc.  It  is  a  dry  statement  of  fact. 
Nevertheless,  it  may  safely  be  asserted  that  few  men  having  the 
same  information  to  impart  would  give  it  in  just  the  same  way. 

The  passage  quoted  by  Prof.  Genung  was  called  styleless  by  him, 
probably  because  there  is  in  it  a  very  low  degree  of  emotional  excite- 
ment. But  the  writer  of  the  passage  evidently  takes  a  stand  per- 
sonally toward  his  subject  when  he  says  "I  have  stated"  and  "Let 
me  enumerate."  There  was  no  fatal  necessity  for  him  to  put  his 
sentences  in  the  active  rather  than  the  passive  voice,  or  vice  versa, 
or  with  one  end  foremost  rather  than  the  other,  or  to  use  the  par- 
ticular words  he  uses,  or  to  connect  or  fail  to  connect  his  sentences 
as  he  does.  Writing  that  is  more  than  mere  cataloguing  cannot  help 
having  style,  though  the  style  may  be  conventional. 

If  it  be  maintained  that  a  manner  of  writing  not  sufficiently 
peculiar  to  serve  to  characterize  the  writer  from  all  other  men-  does 
not  deserve  to  be  called  "style,"  we  may  reply  that  of  most  men  the 
most  striking  peculiarity  is  conventionality.  Their  gait,  their  ges- 
ture, their  intonation,  and  their  rhythm  are,  to  the  eyes  of  all  but 
a  few  friends,  conventional. 

Style  is  elevated  above  conventionality  and  made  individual  main- 
ly by  the  pressure  of  emotion  in  the  writer,  and  the  natural  result 
of  strong  emotion  is  rhythmical  expression.  Heightened  emotional 
pressure  causes  repetition  of  words.3  The  machinery  of  expression 
becomes  inadequate  to  carry  off  the  excess  of  matter  suddenly  crowded 
upon  it.  There  is  temporary  damming  up  of  the  channels,  with 

J  Hodgson,  Outcast  Essays  and  Verse,  p.  220,  1881. 

2  Genung,  Practical  Rhetoric,  p.  13,  1899. 

3  Hoeffding,  Vierteljahrscbrift  f.  Wies.  Phil.,  1890.  XIV,  S.  185. 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  41 

consequent  strong  out-break,  followed  by  a  lull  and  a  repetition  of 
the  damming  up  process.1  The  phenomenon  may  be  likened  to  the 
bubbling  of  water  from  a  narrow-necked  bottle.  As  a  result  we  get 
expressions  that  are  only  excited  stuttering  like  "No,  no,  no,  no!" 
rhetorical  explosions  like  the  classical,  "Abiit,  excessit,  evasit,  erupit," 
Chatham's  "I  am  astonished,  I  am  shocked  to  hear  such  principles 
confessed,  to  hear  them  avowed  in  this  house  and  in  this  country," 
and  the  more  complex  rhythms  of  poetry  and  prose. 


The  effect  of  rhythm  in  language  is  to  lock  the  parts  together  into 
a  unity  and  thus  to  facilitate  comprehension.  It  economizes  atten- 
tion, for  it  assists  the  reader  in  putting  emphasis  where  it  is  due. 
It  is  often  found  that  writers  who  are  difficult  .to  read  become  easy 
after  they  have  been  heard  in  oral  discourse.  Their  peculiar  mode 
of  vocal  accentuation  is  imperfectly  suggested  in  their  writing,  but 
the  voice  once  having  been  heard,  its  remembered  rhythm  thereafter 
guides  the  reader.  The  experience  here  referred  to  is  especially  com- 
mon with  writing  in  foreign  languages. 

The  need  of  having  the  "swing"  of  a  sentence  in  order  to  under- 
stand it  may  be  illustrated  by  an  example.  Ask  someone  to  read 
the  following  sentence  aloud  without  previous  examination:  "Now, 
any  fact,  whether  of  arithmetic,  or  geography,  or  grammar,  which  is 
not  led  up  to  and  into  out  of  something  which  has  previously  occu- 
pied a  significant  position  in  the  child's  life  for  its  own  sake,  is 
forced  into  this  position."2  The  half  dozen  particles,  "up,  to,  and, 
into,  out,  of,"  coming  together  usually  cause  a  halt  or  a  stumble. 
But  as  .soon  as  it  becomes  clear  that  the  accents  are  on  "up,"  "in," 
and  "out,"  there  is  no  difficulty  in  reading  and  understanding  the 
sentence. 

Spencer  has  suggested  that  the  excellence  of  a  style  might  be 
measured  by  the  rate  of  a  reader's  comprehension.  The  rate  of  com- 
prehension, again,  it  would  seem,  should  be  shown  by  the  speed  with 
which  a  piece  of  writing  is  read  aloud.  A  few  tests  of  this  kind  were 
made  by  the  writer,  as  follows : 

"Sesame  and  Lilies,"  "Red  Rover,"  the  "Essay  on  Boswell,"  "Mod- 
ern Painters,"  and  "The  Old  Pacific  Capital,"  have  different  rhythms 
as  indicated  in  Tables  I  and  II.  "Red  Rover"  is  least  rhythmical, 
"Old  Pacific  Capital,"  most.  "Sesame  and  Lilies"  is  less  rhythmical 
than  "Modern  Painters."  The  predominant  rhythm  of  "Old  Pacific 

i  Spencer,  First  Principles,  Chapter:  Rhythm  of  Motion. 
2Dewey:  The  Child  and  the  Curriculum;  Oontrib.     to  Ed.  v.  Chicago, 
p.  32.  1902. 


42  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

Capital"  is  duple;  in  "Red  Rover"  and  "Essay  on  Boswell"  it  is 
triple.  "Modern  Painters"  is  more  duple  than  "Sesame  and  Lilies'* 
and  has  less  long  feet. 

About  500  words  of  each  of  these  selections  were  read  aloud  by 
(J)  at  a  rate  of  speed  which  he  was  told  to  make  as  nearly  as  possible 
normal;  that  is,  natural  or  easy.  He  was  timed  with  a  stop-watch. 
The  figures  in  the  table  are  calculated  for  exactly  500  words. 


• 

J.  (Reading  aloud.) 

s 

&    L.  .  . 

2    min., 

57.1 

HC 

R. 

R.     ... 

2       " 

46.4 

E. 

o.    B  

2       " 

31.8 

H 

M. 

P  

2       " 

36.4 

„ 

o 

P.    C.  .  . 

2       " 

28 

., 

The  same  selections  were  read  by  (F),  and  as  there  seemed  to  be 
a  tendency  to  read  the  later  selections  faster,  the  last  two  were 
changed  about. 

F.   (Reading  aloud.) 

S.   &  L 3  min.,  1.2     sec. 

R.    R 2  "  47 

B.    o.    B 2  "  36.6 

O.    P.    C 2  "  32.9       " 

M.    P 2  "  36.4 

After  reading  them  all  (F.)  read  S.  &  L.,  again,  in 

2  min.,  43.7  sec. 

It  appears  from  these  tests  that  "Sesame  and  Lilies"  with  its  long 
feet  and  irregular  movement  was  read  more  slowly  than  "Modern 
Painters"  with  its  great  amount  of  duple  rhythm.  Stevenson's 
style,  so  often  referred  to  as  "light,"  appears  literally  to  go  quickly. 

The  three  Kipling  stories  were  tested  in  the  same  way.  These 
differ  according  to  Tables  I  and  II,  "In  the  Matter  of  a  Private  "  con- 
taining the  greatest  amount  of  duple  rhythm,  "The  Man  Who  Was." 
the  least.  The  readers  were  (A.  L.),  (B.)  and  (L.). 


I     11     P  

A.  L. 

151.09    8€C. 

B. 

154.05  MC. 

L. 
169.96  tec. 

I.    K.    M  

152.83     " 

156.85     " 

165.91     " 

M.    W.    W  

100.60     " 

160.60     " 

170.50     " 

"The  Man  Who  Was"  was  read  slowest  by  all  three.     "In  the 
Matter  of  a  Private"  was  read  quickest  by  two.     The  results  from 


RHYTHM   IN   PROSE.  43 

this  test  agree,  on  the  whole,  with  those  from  the  reading  of  ( J.)  and 
(F.)  in  indicating  that  duple  rhythm  moves  faster  than  other 
rhythms,  and  that  much  rhythm  conduces  to  speed  in  reading. 

Strongly  marked  rhythm,  as  it  is  an  outcome  of  emotion,  also 
stirs  up  feeling  in  the  reader  or  listener.  Just  as  a  loud  cry  sug- 
gests the  emotional  state  of  the  one  who  utters  it,  so  marked  rhythm 
in  language  implying  that  speech  is  going  on  under  high  emotional 
pressure,  immediately  excites  an  interest  in  the  emotion-arousing 
thought.  The  rhythmically  expressed  thought  gets  a  hearing,  for 
those  to  whom  it  is  addressed  share  in  anticipation  the  excitement  of 
the  thinker. 

Ehythmless  writing  is  even  more  difficult  to  find  than  styleless 
writing,  for  thought  is  by  its  nature  rhythmical  and  so  must  its  ex- 
pression be.  "Like  a  bird's  life  it  seems  to  be  made  of  an  alterna- 
tion of  flights  and  perchings.  The  rhythm  of  language  expresses 
this,  where  every  thought  is  expressed  in  a  sentence  and  every 
sentence  closed  by  a  period." x  Children  just  beginning  to  write 
articulately,  necessarily  fall  into  such  a  simple  sentence  rhythm. 
"Dear  Uncle ,"  writes  a  six-year-old,  "It  made  me  happy  to  re- 
ceive your  letter.  This  afternoon  I  was  going  to  pick  some  violets 
for  you  but  it  rained.  I  have  a  surprise  to  tell  you  when  you  come. 
Father  was  down  west  last  week.  He  was  away  a  long  time.  Can 
you  come  soon.  I  have  another  surprise  for  you  for  supper.  It  made 
me  smile  too  when  mother  read  your  letter."  The  rhythm  here  is, 
indeed,  fragmentary,  rudimentary  and  disturbed  as  compared  with 
that  displayed  by  a  mature  writer. 

As  an  illustration  of  weak  rhythm  the  following  sentence  by 
Addison  may  be  taken :  "In  the  next  place  we  may  observe  that  where 
the  words  are  not  monosyllables,  we  often  make  them  so,  as  much  as 
lies  in  our  power,  by  our  rapidity  of  pronunciation."  The  words 
that  have  to  be  accented  in  this  sentence  are  mainly  poor  in  content 
— they  add  little  to  what  is  already  in  the  mind.  In  the  clause,  "we 
often  make  them  so  as  much  as  lies  in  our  power,"  the  only  words 
unmistakably  requiring  an  accent  are  "make"  and  "power;"  the  rest 
is  rhythmically  structureless.  It  is,  of  course,  possible  with  a  little 
distortion  of  the  natural  mode  of  reading  to  accent  other  words,  but 
the  effect  is  disagreeable,  for  the  mind  abhors  a  vacuum.  Unrhyth- 
mical writing  is  loose  and  undecided.  Ehythmical  writing  implies 
a  consciousness  of  one's  purpose  and  a  mastery  of  one's  meanings. 
This  brings  us  to  another  condition  of  rhythmical  writing, — the 

i  James,  Principles  of  Psychology,  vol.  1,  p.  243. 


44  RHYTHM   IN   PROSE. 

possession  by  the  writer  of  a  complex  thought  as  a  whole.  There 
can  be  only  the  crudest  and  most  elementary  sort  of  rhythm  in  the 
writing  of  one  whose  thought  comes  in  driblets.  A  complex  thought 
grasped  as  a  unit  is,  in  fact,  another  aspect  of  that  which  was  re- 
ferred to  above  as  pressure  of  emotion.  The  pent-up  energy  that 
issues  in  repetitions,  parallelisms,  balance,  etc.,  also  produces  phonetic 
rhythm,  for  there  is  an  impatience  in  that  state  of  mind  of  insignifi- 
cant words.  Accents  then  follow  one  another  unerringly  and  there  is 
no  vacillation  or  ambiguity. 


